25 January – 18 March 2012 Press View: 24 January 2012, 4 – 6pm
The Forgetting of Proper Names is a multi-strand two-month season that focuses on vibrant contemporary art and culture from Poland, exploring the subjectivity of memory, language and translation, the way the past is reshaped over time and reinterpreted as it crosses cultural boundaries.
Centered around a core exhibition of three young and dynamic Polish artists showing for the first time in London: Wojciech Bškowski (b. 1979, Poznao), Anna Molska (b. 1983, Prudnik) and Agnieszka Polska (b. 1985, Lublin), this specially conceived season also interweaves performance, screenings, readings and discussions, exploring the fresh and innovative ways in which the artists engage with the history of the avant-garde and the changing social conditions in contemporary Poland, and further making explicit the connections to contemporary Polish literature, poetry and music.
The Forgetting of Proper Names is a unique opportunity for UK audiences to engage with the exciting and influential emerging Polish art scene, presenting a new generation of artists who have already gained international acclaim but remain largely unknown in Britain. Now in their late twenties and early thirties, Bškowski, Molska and Polska grew up in post-communist Poland, and their work reflects a new-found internationalism which references the developments of modernism and the avant-garde whilst simultaneously engaging with the legacy of the Former East. Although connected generationally and sharing certain eclecticism in their use of media and materials, each of these artists interacts with their subject matter in highly individualised and diverse ways.
Wojciech Bškowski’s animated films record acute observations of his most immediate and intimate surroundings. Reflecting upon everyday rituals, as well as the realm of the artist’s own consciousness, Bškowski is perhaps the most prolific and visible protagonist of the vibrant Poznao art and music community. His work first attracted international attention when shown in the highly acclaimed group show Younger Than Jesus (The New Museum, NYC, 2009). Operating across multiple platforms, Bškowski’s multifaceted practice weaves together moving image, sound-based installation and performance. Such works offer a crude, existential and subjective expression of the world, which highlights the relationships between performance and video, body and space.
Anna Molska’s video works are constructed as filmed performances. She often invites ordinary people, rather than professional actors to act as protagonists, thus allowing for an authenticity, an uncertainty even, and a natural spontaneity that is an integral part of the piece. A graduate of the now legendary workshop of Grzegorz Kowalski, she reconsiders the power of revolutionary thought to bring about social change, through socially oriented investigations of the avant-garde visual and political idioms. Her knowingly nostalgic excavations of modernist utopias serve as pretext for examining today’s reality.
In Agnieszka Polska’s visually arresting forays into bygone eras or half-forgotten figures of the Polish avant-garde, the past is not so much an object of historical research and analysis, as the subject of fictionalisation and re-working. In her works, the facts as presented cannot be relied on, as slippage of information, the omitted or misinterpreted, or the wrongly archived, form a central part of her practice. In animated videos that juxtapose archival black and white photographs of performances, actions and spaces, illustrations from old text-books and vintage magazines, the viewer is propelled into a falsely constructed melancholia, feeling a longing for something that perhaps never was.
The Forgetting of Proper Names seeks to emphasise the potency of the artists’ personal and idiosyncratic visual languages, whilst exposing a shared sensibility, evident in their common interests in the re-imagining of historical events, investigations into the relationship between live actions and objects, the foregrounding of the body as subject within performance, as well as the use of sound as a narrative tool.
This season, the first of three presented annually, marks the launch of a new and ambitious programming model for Calvert 22 Foundation in 2012. Building on Calvert 22’s established position as a unique platform for the presentation of developments in contemporary culture from Russia, CIS Countries and Eastern Europe, the 2012 programme aims to create a truly innovative, discursive, and cross-disciplinary platform of exploration.
The Forgetting of Proper Names is curated by Lina Duverovid and Dominik Czechowski and includes an extensive publication, online resources and a diverse events programme featuring curator and artist talks as well as performances by Wojciech Bškowski and Agnieszka Polska.
For further information please contact Calvert 22 Press and Marketing Officer Giulia Crossley: press@calvert22.org / 020 7613 2141
About Calvert 22:
CALVERT 22 is the UK’s only not for profit foundation dedicated to the presentation of contemporary Art and Culture from Russian and Eastern Europe. With five exhibitions a year from both emergent and more established contemporary artists as well as a range of contextual events, performances and activities, Calvert 22 aims to interrogate existing preconceptions about the art and culture of these regions and propose new possibilities for cross-cultural understanding and exchange.
Visitor Information
Address: 22 Calvert Avenue, London E2 7JP Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday: 10am – 6pm; Sunday: 11am – 5pm Admission: Free Contact: +44 (0) 20 7613 2141| info@calvert22.org www.calvert22.org Nearest Tube: Shoreditch High St/ Old St / Liverpool St
