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5/2/2009

Ion Grigorescu

Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw

As it awaits the completion of its new building, currently being designed by Swiss architect Christian Kerez, winner of a 2007 international competition, and set to open in mid-2014, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw begins its second year of regular artistic operations at its temporary site, across the Palace of Culture and Science from its future location in the center of Warsaw.

The Museum's current activities are focused on establishing an original operating model for this newly-born institution, one which builds its identity on that historic moment when the "former East" and changing West meet. The outcome of that meeting remains an open question.

The Museum inaugurated its program last spring with a research project and exhibition entitled "As soon as I open my eyes I see a film": Experiment in the art of Yugoslavia in the '60s and '70s, which dealt with experimental strategies in the visual arts in the former Yugoslavia.

Now, The Museum is presenting Ion Grigorescu: In the body of the victim 1969–2008, the first retrospective exhibition by Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu. The show is the outcome of a year's research into the life and work of the Bucharest-based artist conducted by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in collaboration with Austrian curator Kathrin Rhomberg, who has been named to curate the 6th Berlin Biennale in 2010.

This exhibition reflects the Museum's aim to create innovative relationships between art history and the present, and to pose contemporary questions to the past. Grigorescu, born in 1945, has developed a unique artistic practice reacting to current political developments through an existential approach. The artist anticipated today's apocalyptic sense of crisis and made it the focus of his œuvre.

Grigorescu has been recording his pursuit of what might be described as an anti-art where life and artistic practice are intertwined into a unity, since the beginning of the 1970s in 8-mm films, photographic series, and photo collages, all of which document the artist's scrutiny of social realities. By the end of the '70s Grigorescu began recording his performances, which concentrated on ritualized actions around his body. In later years Grigorescu's work has reflected his growing interest in spirituality, as inspired by orthodox religious tradition in Romania.

Exhibitions presented at the temporary site of The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw are complemented by an extensive program of artistic projects in public space, such as the recreation of Henryk Stażewski's 1970 Nine Rays of Light in the Sky on December 5, 2008 adjacent to the Palace of Culture, Warsaw's Stalinist arch-landmark, and to the Museum's future location.

Images of this unique abstract painting with light, originally conceived and executed in 1970 by Stażewski (1894–1988), a legendary figure in the history of the Polish avant-garde, will be exhibited at the Museum beginning on February 6, as a documentation of this first and highly successful public-art project organized by the institution.

Simultaneously, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw announces the opening of its new bookshop, to be called Museum Pro qm, and run as an art project in collaboration with the critically acclaimed Berlin-based bookshop Pro qm. The bookshop, located on the Museum premises, will offer a selection of books and art magazines focused on issues and ideas relevant to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw's program and institutional stance.

Official opening: Friday, February 6, 2009, 18h00

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
ul. Panska 3 - 00-124 Warsaw
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 12 12h00-20h00. Closed Mondays

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