With 23 of the Polish capital’s independent gallery spaces participating, the annual Warsaw Gallery Weekend (WGW)—now in its sixth year—sought to offer an insight into some of the prevalent trends coursing through the city’s art scene. Facing criticism in the recent past for a certain localist, arguably backward-facing concern to its contemporary art landscape, the annual showcase addresses this, embracing an outward-looking, international programme of exhibitions. Staged in this post-communist creative hotbed, the opportunity to investigate and explore the current febrile mood of geopolitical unrest across the continent at large also looms. Parallel to the official WGW programme is new kid on the block (or should that be bloc?), Not Fair. The contemporary art fair, whose concern is to engage foreign galleries and artists, is as much exhibition, and it included work from around 20 participating galleries (22-25 September). Zuzanna Czebatul, a Polish artist based between Berlin and New York, presented Pivotal Blast, an obelisk, lying broken into three pieces on the floor. A testament to power toppled, its fractured symbolism opens up broader conversations about the failure of authority. The Austrian artist Eva Grubinger’s 2011 work Decoy could at first glance be a huge earring; a scaled-up piece of fishing tackle, recontextualised you cannot help but wonder what on earth something this big has been made to bait. Celebrating its inaugural year, the fair brings with it a sense of mischief; the way it at once augments and challenges the official Gallery Weekend feels important, making future iterations of Not Fair complementary and essential.
Not Fair in Warsaw's Palace of Culture featuring Zuzanna Czebatul's Pivotal Blast and Eva Grubinger’s Decoy (2011) (Image: Bartosz Górka)
Artur Żmijewski: Collection, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Górskiego 1A (until 10 November)
The Foksal Gallery Foundation’s contribution is a new series by the established artist and filmmaker Artur Żmijewski. Shot in black and white, Collection captures the movement of people with physical disabilities in the act of walking, occupying familiar ground for those acquainted with Żmijewski’s practice. Contentious and often uncomfortable is both descriptor of this work and the artist’s leitmotif. His description of the film as documenting “the movement of a body imprinted with an error” means you are left with an ambivalence toward it. Simultaneously, however, the directness of this work means that it cannot help but stay with you.
Zuza Ziółkowska/Hercberg: Unknown Variable, Le Guern Gallery, Widok 8 (until 26 November)
At Le Guern, you’ll find Unknown Variable, a solo show by Zuza Ziółkowska/Hercberg. Ostensibly abstract, her paintings featuring various techniques: layers of texture, often rendered in eye-popping colours, are full of external referents. Biomorphic forms rub shoulders with roiling land- and seascapes while eruptions of intense reds, yellows and burnished orange produce rich and overwhelming sunbursts. The less dramatic paintings have about them a quiet beauty; utilising a subtler palette, they are no less impressive. In comparison the works on paper seem __more like sketches, slight when confronted with the extreme extroversion of some of the paintings.
Czuwaj, Biuro Wystaw, 16/18 Krakowskie Przedmieście (until 29 October)
Ascending the stairs to Biuro Wystaw you are confronted with red, throbbing neon. Bearing the legend CZUWAJ—or Stay Ready in English, this is a conversation that resonates across generations. The curators, Sarmen Beglarian and Sylwia Szymaniak, have grouped artists who, between them, track a trajectory through Poland’s recent political history. The avant-garde painter Władysław Strzemiński’s 1947 work The bombing of the Reichstag sits adjacent to Hubert Czerepok’s Americans I am Afraid of (2016). In blue and red neon, it inverts the David Bowie lyric “I’m afraid of Americans” to deliver a stark warning about the responsibility of those Americans who occupy a self-designated role of policeman to the world. The exhibition fizzes with ideas, challenging both the authorities and the public at large. Monika Drożyńska’s embroidered works (whose medium cleverly belies their potency)—Terror and Fuck the 1980s! Fight now! (both 2016)—are a clarion call to those prone to nostalgia for that which went before.
Zuzanna Czebatul, Piktogram, Kredytowa 9/26 (until 12 November)
Zuzanna Czebatul—she of Pivotal Blast—also has a solo show at Piktogram. The works, a number of large-scale, Greek-appearance frescos, are high-gloss, their marble-effect surfaces intentionally at odds with bases of cheap concrete. They are, Czebatul says, indicative of the “growing split between left and right in most European societies and the United States”. More nuanced than her shattered monolith in the Palace of Culture, the works’ subtlety might be lost on many, leaving some to wonder what on earth is going on. It is this very subtlety however that seems to indicate an artist worth watching, one of depth and substance, capable of executing __more than one good idea.