Druga Grupa. Call!

November 20 – December 20, 2015
Opening: November 20, 6 p.m.

 

The exhibition will be accompanied by events prepared by the artists – the members of Druga Grupa, taking place during the vernissage as well as at the conference Tadeusz Kantor. Odbicia on November 21.

 

 

The Call! exhibition is an unusual presentation by Druga Grupa – Jacek Maria Stokłosa, Lesław Janicki, Wacław Janicki (actors with Tadeusz Kantor’s Cricot 2 Theatre), referring back to their appearance, titled Guarantee for 20-35, at the 1973 Youth Biennale in Paris. In Cricoteka, the artists are going to recreate the project from almost fifty years ago, raising questions about topicality of art and its confrontation with human existence

 

Call! – unanimously cried out the members of Druga Grupa – Jacek Maria Stokłosa, Leszek Janicki and Wacław Janicki. The time has come to confront idea with reality!
Nearly half a century ago, in 1973, we offered Guarantees for 20-35 at the Eighth Youth Biennale staged by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Paris. We had reasonable grounds to do so, we had collected resources sufficient for reaching a ripe old age, reflecting a natural habit of old people who tend to save all kinds of things for an undetermined future. That was our guarantee. We put several tons of food in boxes brought from Poland on display.

Out of sheer contrariness, we appeared at the Youth Biennale as elderly people. This was possible thanks to professional makeup artists who worked for the film industry. The makeup was so convincing that the French minister of culture, who visited our display, showed due reverence to the elderly versions of us. Once again, our work failed to encompass typically artistic products; instead, we utilized found objects and ourselves – our specific sense of humour, irony and wit. The lack of any specific work means that in order to perform our action again, we must recreate the props and the characters. We have made it, we are now as old as we pretended to be back then, or even much older. And it is in our faces that one can see how an idea that was thought up several decades ago has come true.

According to critic Krzysztof Jarecki the fact that the process of dematerialization of art was very advanced in our work has eventuated in partial oblivion. Our “pieces” are not to be found in museums. This seems unfair as the essence and value of art cannot be an outcome of its material form alone. Since as long ago as Wolfflin’s days, the history of art has been considered to be a history of the spirit, or the grandest aspects of the human mind, rather than being a story of visually attractive material works which are, however, frequently lacking in intellectual content.

Druga Grupa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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