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24/1/2013

Lech Majewski

Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu - CoCA, Torun

Curator: Mateusz Bieczyński
Cooperation: Agnieszka Mori

CoCA in Toruń invites you to an exhibition of Lech Majewski, the outstanding Polish director and audio-visual artist who became famous thanks to, among others, the exceptional movie he Mill and the Cross – an extraordinary interpretation of Breughel's mysterious painting The Procession to Calvary. Fragments of that work will be shown during the exhibition in CoCA Znaki Czasu. However, the main part of the exposition will consist of an instalment of the Krew Poety (Blood of a Poet) film series, specially prepared for Toruń, during which the artist develops a visual story full of symbols, visions and hidden meanings in dozens of simultaneously displayed video projections.

Blood of a Poet is a series of 33 videos that create one multi-threaded story.
The series had its world premiere at the Conjuring the Moving Image exhibition, a very prestigious retrospective of Majewski's works organized in 2006 by MoMA in New York. Twenty projections from Blood of a Poet have been combined with the monumental architecture of CoCA's column hall in an interesting manner that emphasizes its hieratic nature and central plan. Particular projections create multi-level relations both between themselves and the sculpture placed in the exhibition space, thus playing a unique spectacle in front of the viewer's eyes. Simultaneous presentation of various parts of the series allows for constant interpretation of the whole work in new and unrepeatable ways. Lech Majewski once more proves his mastery in stimulating human imagination by means of image.

The exhibition will also house projections of the Bruegel Suite. In 2011 Lech Majewski finished his three-year-long work on The Mill and the Cross, a movie based on the masterpiece by Pieter Brueghel. That movie, as the author says, can be compared to a digital arras woven from the perspective, atmospheric phenomena and human figures. Its realization required both patience and imagination, as well as new CG technologies and 3D effects. The movie, starring Charlotte Rampling, Michael York and Rutger Hauer as Breughel, opened the Sundance film festival. Based on that intricate film work, Majewski made a series of video-art pieces entitled Bruegel Suite, which were shown in February 2011 in the Louvre and in June were displayed in Chiesa San Lio as a part of the 54. Venice Biennale. CoCA Znaki Czasu has a fragment of that work of art in its collection. The exhibition will present these pieces as well as a broad selection of the artist's other works.

Lech Majewski is an extraordinary artist - he shares his visions through paintings, films, installations, novels, theatrical plays and operas shown mainly in the USA, Italy, Poland and France. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, but ultimately graduated from PWSFTviT (The Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School) in Łódź. He is the author of such films as, among others, Prisoner of Rio, Ewangelia według Harry's go (Gospel According to Harry), Basquiat, Wojaczek, Angelus or Ogród rozkoszy ziemskich (The Garden of Earthly Delights). Majewski's films, shown at festivals in Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Rome, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, London, Mar del Plata, Barcelona, Miami, Jerusalem, Moscow and Montreal, have won numerous awards.

His works have been presented in galleries and museums all over the world: Paris Louvre, Venice Biennale, Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Museo des Belles Artes in Buenos Aires, Kunstagenten Gallery in Berlin, Image Forum in Tokyo, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Deutsches Filminstitute Museum in Frankfurt am Main, SmART Project Space in Amsterdam, The National Gallery in Washington (D.C.), Gallerie Embiricos in Paris, Art Institute of Chicago, Yokohama Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Aichi Arts Center in Nagoji, Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, National Museum in Gdańsk, Schindler's Factory in Kraków and many others.

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Take 5
Focus Poland Project 3
11.01.2013 – 17.03.2013

Oskar Dawicki, Jacek Malinowski, Agnieszka Polska, Aleksandra Waliszewska, Honza Zamojski

Curated by: Friederike Fast

From January until March 2013, the Centre for Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Toruń will be hosting the TAKE 5
exhibition. Part of the Focus Poland project, the spotlight is for the third time placed on the Polish art scene. Unlike the previous solo presentations of works by Marzena Nowak (2011, curated by Rainer Fuchs, MUMOK Vienna, Austria) and Agnieszka Kurant (2012, curated by Joanna Sandel, Botkyrka konsthall, Sweden), Take 5 features a small group of Polish artists: Oskar Dawicki (1971), Jacek Malinowski (1964), Agnieszka Polska (1985), Aleksandra Waliszewska (1976) and Honza Zamojski (1981).

The exhibition reflects the lively, diverse Polish art scene, offering a personal insight into this particular sphere of a society in the grip of dynamic development. Despite the significant differences between the participating artists in terms of their work and their background, they share a special ability to sensitively or even probingly question their environment and their role as artists while lightly skipping over the boundaries of human logic. Clear visions are fused with dark, distorted images of reality. Aspects such as fact and fiction, originality and imitation, failure and magic are recurring themes of this existential analysis. And the artists keep slipping into the role of ingenious charlatan in order to cope almost acrobatically with the heaviness of being.
Take 5 includes both existing works and others created especially for the exhibition. The show has been devised in close dialogue with many Polish artists and creatives, and is hence the result of a complex process of focusing and defocusing. It represents a snapshot which, like a film or a sound recording (a take), resounds in its characteristic polyphony.

Image: Lech Majewsk

Press contact:
Katarzyna Drewnowska - Toczko Phone: +48 56 6109723 katarzyna.toczko@csw.torun.pl

Opening: 25th January, 7.00 PM

Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu
Waly gen. Sikorskiego 13 87-100 Torun Poland
Tue, Wed, Thu: 10.00 - 18.00
Fri, Sat, Sun: 10.00 - 20.00
Monday closed
Tickets
Adults: 10 pln
Concessionary: 5 pln
Families (2 adults and 2 children aged 18 and younger): 20 pln
Admission is free on Thursdays.

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