Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Tadeusz Dobosz, Wojciech Fangor, Zdzisław Jurkiewicz, Teresa Kelm, Zygmunt Krauze, Andrzej Matuszewski, Ewa Partum, Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Henryk Stażewski, Stanisław Zamecznik
curator: Michał Jachuła
documentation: Marian Szpakowski, Zdzisław Głowacki, Tomasz Jaśkiewicz, Tadeusz Śliwiński, Tadeusz Wolański, Henryk Morel, Piotr Perepłyś, Rajmund Ziemski, Stefan Krygier, Marian Bogusz, Edward Bunsch, František Kysztal, Magdalena Więcek, Stefan Gierowski, Bronisław Kierzkowski, Roman Opałka, Bohdan Urbanowicz, Włodzimierz Borowski, Grzegorz Kowalski, Henryk Morel, Cezary Szubartowski, Edward Krasiński, Zbigniew Gostomski, Koji Kamoji, Andrzej Łobodziński, Krystyn Zieliński, Tadeusz Kantor, Zygmunt Targowski, Stanisław Dróżdż and others

The exhibition titled Spaces is a unique opportunity to get immersed in a phenomenon that permanently changed the perception of art and its presence in our surroundings. By showing the work of the classics of Polish modern art – Magdalena Abakanowicz, Wojciech Fangor, Henryk Stażewski or Maria Pinińska-Bereś, to name but a few – the exhibition showcases the phenomenon of environment art, one of the most important and innovative trends in the second half of the 20th century.

What does art that engages various senses and literally draws the viewer into the work of art actually look like? At the Spaces exhibition at Zachęta – the National Gallery of Art, we present unique projects of the classic figures in Polish modern art, which have changed the way we think about space, the viewer, and the exposition. Reconstructions of historical works and abundant materials from the archives help explore pioneering artistic practices that continue to inspire others to this day.

The term environment refers to site-specific installation art that captures the viewer physically and engages their senses, with spaces designed in a way that allows the viewer to enter them and experience their light, sound, colour, and rhythm. This way of thinking about art predates today’s immersive installations by a few decades. It is not just about the form but about the entire logic of the creative process, which combines painting, sculpture, architecture, and performance.

In Poland, the artistic community took up this trend quite early. The Study of Space (1958) by Wojciech Fangor and Stanisław Zamecznik is considered to be the first work of environment art in Poland. With its experiments with perspective, depth, and three-dimensionality, painting became the major driver for the development of environment art in our country. Another important impulse came from the cooperation between artists and architects in designing exhibitions, especially with Oskar and Zofia Hansens, and Stanisław Zamecznik.

The exhibition includes five reconstructions of environment installations; three of them are presented for the first time since their creation. They differ in their approach – from one rooted in painting or the concept, through sculpture, to attempts at captivating the viewer’s senses. The criterion of originality and experimentation is the common denominator for all of them.

Apart from reconstructions, the exposition also includes documentation of the work of artists such as Włodzimierz Borowski, Józef Szajna, Zbigniew Dłubak, Edward Krasiński, Zbigniew Gostomski, and Zygmunt Targowski.

The exhibition also highlights the important context for the trend, i.e. the galleries and artistic events that made it possible for artists to experiment with form and space. Apart from Galeria Foksal, whose tiny exposition space encouraged working with space and with the concept of the exhibition as an art medium, Zachęta also recalls Galeria Współczesna in Warsaw, run by Janusz and Maria Boguccy, where four of the works reconstructed today were displayed across the 1960s and 1970s.

The Spaces exhibition is more that an overview of historical projects. It is also meant to be a reflection on how environment art shaped new models of thinking about exposition, the relationship with the viewer, and the limits of the specific artistic disciplines. With the omnipresent immersive installations and digital media, the exhibition goes back to the sources of this phenomenon and allows for appreciating the pioneering approach of the creators, who overcame numerous limitations to freely explore experimentation in art.

^{Zdzisław Jurkiewicz, Environment in Pulsating Red and Blue Light, 1969, Pod Moną Lisą Gallery, Wrocław, photo: Tadeusz Rolke, courtesy of Lower Silesia Society of the Fine Arts}