Collection of the Gallery P.O. Box 17 collected by Tomasz Sikorski, one of the gallery's curators, documents the short period of this undertaking. The gallery was a kind of extension of the previous activity of the Mospan Gallery, run by Sikorski together with Tomasz Konart. After the decision of the authorities of the Mospan Club, operating at Warsaw University of Technology, to close the Mospan Gallery in December 1978 (under the guise of renovation), Sikorski and Konart decided to continue working on their own, in the form of a gallery without a permanent exhibition space. This is how the P.O. Box 17 Gallery was created, whose only space was a post number No. 17 in the post office No. 65 in Warsaw.
In practice, P.O. Box 17 Gallery was benefiting from the hospitality of its affiliated cultural centers: twice from the space of the Dziekanka Students' Art Center, and once - from Stodoła Club. Two cross-cutting group exhibitions organized by Sikorski and Konart took place in Dziekanka. The first of them, Documentation and Autodocumentation, took place on March 5-6, 1979, and the exhibition was accompanied by a theoretical session.
The event was attended by Peter van Beveren, Andrzej Jórczak, Tomasz Konart, Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek, Jerzy Olek, Jerzy Onuch, Andrzej Partum, Andrzej Paruzel, Józef Robakowski, and Tomasz Sikorski - representatives of the leading neo-avant-garde milieus in Warsaw, Łódź and Wrocław. Likewise, the rich group of artists gathered during the exhibition Photography - current status on November 16-21, 1979 - among participants were Janusz Bałdyga, Jacek Jóźwiak, Janusz Kołodrubiec, Tomasz Konart, Paweł Kwiek, Jacek Malicki, Jerzy Onuch, Antoni Mikołajczyk, Andrzej Paruzel, Józef Robakowski, Andrzej Różycki, Zygmunt Rytka, Tomasz Sikorski, Łukasz Szajna and Ryszard Waśko. In the meantime, on April 24, 1979, Krzysztof Zarębski performed at Stodoła Club. In addition to organizing events, P.O. Box 17 Gallery has published several publications, including the catalogs of works by Sikorski and Konart.
The activity of the Gallery P.O Box 17 was expressing bizarre characteristic features and trends of neo-avant-garde art of the late 1970s. Sikorski and Konart were interested in the social dimension of art, understood as building interpersonal relationships and self-organization of artistic circles. They were exploring ephemeral forms such as performance, happening, presentation, etc, for which they did not need permanent premises.
Already the title of the first exhibition is showing the creators' awareness of the elusive character of those artistic genres, so they felt the necessity to conduct scrupulous documentation of activities. By highlighting the number of the mailbox in the gallery name, they showed the intention to participate in the world mail art network. It was also significant to develop the authotematic considerations - in sessions accompanying exhibitions, during speeches and in publications, along with artistic practices.
Though Galeria P.O. Box 17 survived only a one year, as an independent, deprived of financial support and its own place, the initiative of two young artists is an important element of neo-avant-garde history in the PRL.
Sources:
Tomasz Sikorski, Galeria P.O.Box 17 - historia i kalendarium, http://galeriapobox17.blogspot.com/2015/01/galeria-pobox-17-historia-kalendarium-i.html;
Tomasz Sikorski, Free Energy, Mazowieckie Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Elektrownia, Radom 2017.
