Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

artists: Wojciech Bruszewski, Paweł Kwiek, Antoni Mikołajczyk, Józef Robakowski, Andrzej Różycki, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Ryszard Waśko

curator: Jolanta Rycerska

subject-matter consultation: Józef Robakowski

They met as students and graduates of the Lodz Film School. For those young artists, film and photography were not merely tools for capturing reality – they were a way of thinking about it. Interested in more than what the image presented, they also looked into the creative process behind it, the mechanisms that governed it, and its limits. From joint experiments conducted in the early 1970s, they went on to establish the Workshop of the Film Form. Fascinated with the language of the visual arts, they explored its structure, perception mechanisms, and communicative potential, ultimately exerting a decisive influence on its development at the time.

As the name suggests, the group focused on film as an art phenomenon. The Workshop of the Film Form brought together artists with excellent training in the film craft, interested in the nature and characteristics of that medium. However, even though the group’s identity focused on film, any artist willing to explore art for its own sake was also welcome.

Treading a fine line between art and theoretical reflection, the group mostly worked with experimental and analytical methods. Through thorough exploration, the group tested the limits of integrity of the media they used. They also expanded the fields of interpretation for their works, combining image with sound and motion, e.g. in film or multimedia installations.

Although the Workshop of the Film Form only existed for seven years, many of its members continued to work for the next decades in line with the spirit of the ideas formulated within it. The exhibition presents films, photographs, performance recordings, installations, interactive objects, poetry, and drawings, which often defy the traditional classification into genres, and are testament not just to the artistic courage but also to the unique intuition of their creators. Raw, analytical, but infused with poetic freedom, those experiments are shown in a new context today.

The exhibition also serves as a starting point for an educational programme that involves the joint exploration of the methods employed by the Workshop of the Film Form. Through meetings, film screenings, and workshops, participants will have an opportunity to immerse themselves in the creative process, explore the limits of media, and discover how the experimental approach of the WFF may inspire them to go “beyond the script”.

The exhibition involves some nudity. Viewer discretion is advised. The exhibition is intended for adult viewers.

Some of the works presented on CRT screens are not suitable for light-sensitive individuals.