Lucim lives on

Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu - CoCA, Torun

The exhibition refers to the three most idealized motives concerning the country: home, nature and community, in relation to utopias that concern them. The idea of the show originates from the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the Lucim group. The title relate their activities to the variety of attitudes towards the countryside. The activity of Grupa 111 appear as a sort of utopia as well. They're motivated by the desire to renew the archetypal way of experiencing reality.

comunicato stampa

Grupa Działania: Bogdan Chmielewski, Witold Chmielewski, Andrzej Maziec, Wiesław Smużny, Stanisław Wasilewski
Grupa 111: Bogdan Chmielewski, Witold Chmielewski, Wiesław Smużny
Bownik i Marcelina Gunia,
Dorota Chilińska i Andrzej Wasilewski,
Roman Dziadkiewicz,
Wojciech Gilewicz,
Jarosław Kozakiewicz,
Łukasz Skąpski,
Robert Rumas

curator: Monika Weychert-Waluszko
arrangement: Robert Rumas
cooperation: Piotr Lisowski

Documentation fromThe National Film Archive and the Research Institute of Pomology and Floriculture in Skierniewice

There are 900 cities and 56.000 villages in Poland... The countryside has a special meaning in polish culture, constituting a getaway, a place to hide, to vanish. It is an area of freedom, a space where various sects, communes and enclaves arise, where open air artistic workshops take place. Such an ambivalent attitude of inferiority complex and denial, intertwining with the fascination with folk tradition and the myth of a life in full harmony with nature, formed two equally strong stereotypes, black and white, that effectively conceal the true image of the countryside.
Lucim lives on is a disorded collection, refering to characteristics of folk art, such as deformations, disproportions, candidness, mixing contents and forms. A sort of a church fair that offers many ideas and visions.

The Lucim lives on exhibition refers to the three most idealized motives concerning the country: home, nature and community, in relation to utopias that concern them. Paradise is a place that God gave to people, meanwhile utopias make the human vision of order real, realising the idea of a better life filled with happiness and deprived of poverty. Looking through rhe prism of space, objects, documents, traces, little details, the artists participating in the project managed to create a modern commentary regarding different visions of rural utopias, from the ones put into practice as state-owned farms or biotechnological solutions to those completely futuristic and unreal.

The idea of the exhibition originates from the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the Lucim group. The group's artistic activity was truly exceptional in the field of visual art in Poland. The project itself is in contradiction with the formula of a retrospective, historical, museum exhibition. The title is supposed to, from one point of view, illustrate the spectacular continuity of the project, and from the other – relate the Lucim activities to the variety of attitudes towards the countryside. The obtained polyphony of voices should bring the country phenomena back into art discourse and subject it to criticism. It will also allow to fully apprecciate the Lucim actions as a consistent and separate artistic way of Bogdan Chmielewski, Witold Chmielewski and Wiesław Smużny. The activity of Grupa 111 appear as a sort of utopia as well. They're motivated by the desire to renew the archetypal way of experiencing reality.

Press information:
Katarzyna Toczko tel. +48 56 6109723 katarzyna.toczko@csw.torun.pl

Opening Apr 03, 2009 07:00 PM

CoCA Centre of Contemporary Art 'Znaki Czasu'
Waly gen. Sikorskiego 13 / 87-100 Torun, Poland
Hours:
Monday closed
Tuesday 10:00 - 18:00
Wednesday 10:00 - 18:00
Thurdsay 10:00 - 18:00
Friday 10:00 - 20:00
Saturday 10:00 - 20:00
Sunday 10:00 - 18:00

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Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu - CoCA

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