COURAGE

connecting collections

The photography made by Tomasz Sikorski documented Edward Dwurnik’s painting action Wykonanie portretów psychologicznych studentów D.S. „Babilon” (Making of psychological portraits of the students from ‘Babylon’ Dormitory) at the Mospan Gallery. The action took place on May 31, 1976. Between 6 PM and 9 PM, Edward Dwurnik painted 28 images of the students living in the dormitory which the Mospan Gallery was associated with. The portraits were made by acrylic paints on the one huge canvas. The canvas was at the end cut into 28 pieces so every participant of the action could take his or her psychological image with his or her name and surname. Dwurnik’s performance was an exceptional event at the Mospan Gallery, one of a few that were addressed directly to the students from the ‘Babylon’ Dormitory of the Warsaw University of Technology.

Ewa Partum was one of the pioneers of the art in the public space in Poland. From the beginning she was interested in the new means of artistic expression, new genres, such as mail art, performance art, photography; also very early she started to create the installations beyond a gallery space. The installation Legalność przestrzeni (Legality of the Space) was constructed in 1971 in the Freedom square in Łódź – the city where the artist was living those days. Partum gathered and put in the one place the collection of dozens of street signs and boards indicating ban of something. The meaning of the gesture was clear: the artist let see the limits of the public spaces and regulations regarding the use of this space in the Polish People’s Republic. The space of the street, at first glance freely accessible and egalitarian, turned out to be severely restricted and under surveillance. The Legality of the Space was an important piece especially in the context of the apparent openness and liberty of the first years of Edward Gierek rules in Poland. The photography of the installation came from the archive of the Artum Foundation.

The photography from the Tomasz Sikorski collection presents Clothes – a piece from the cycle Self-tautologies – Nothing about Myself created by Jerzy Treliński in the 1970s. On the photo, there are two women walking the street in Zielona Góra city in 1975. First of them has the dress, while the second – the vest with prints ‘Treliński’. The prints on the clothes were made from the same typographical pattern.
Treliński as an artist is for the whole his life associated with the Łódź neo-avantgarde milieu. He combined within his works the inspiration form the conceptualism and Russian constructivism. In the Self-tautologies cycle, he created a lot of objects, from books, posters, and postcards, to clothes and flags, to pencil graffiti and everyday-life objects. All of the items were marked by the creator’s surname, always made as the same graphic sign. That way, signaling his presence, Treliński did not reveal anything about himself, while the sign of his individuality became the commentary to the social reality.

Source:
Łukasz Guzek, Najbardziej radykalne postawy w ruchu galerii konceptualnych lat siedemdziesiątych. Galeria 80x140 Jerzego Trelińskiego i Galeria A4 Andrzeja Pierzgalskiego [The Most Radical Attitudes Within The Movement Of 'Conceptual Galleries' In The 70s. Jerzy Trelinski's Gallery 80x140 And Andrzej Pierzgalski's Gallery A4], „Sztuka i Dokumentacja”, nr 4/2011, s. 49-68.