30 September 2017 Conrad Festival exhibitions
A new region of the world, Singularity, Dark Matter, Gdańsk collection on the way, 10th anniversary of Ryms, A long, long time ago… These are the titles of exhibitions you might enter on your agenda when planning the festival week. We encourage you to visit the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Modern Art, the Museum of Photography, the Wyspiański Pavilion, the Nuremberg House, Bona bookshop and the Festival Centre at the Czeczotka Mansion. Like every year, jointly with the festival partners, we prepared for you a rich programme of exhibitions to entourage your exploration of disturbing and inspiring relations between literature and visual arts.
We suggest you visit the Main Market Square. On the weekend preceding the Conrad Festival Krakow will celebrate the 4th anniversary of having been granted the title of the UNESCO City of Literature. On this occasion large-format letters forming the inscription „KRAKÓW MIASTO LITERATURY UNESCO” („Krakow UNESCO City of Literature”) will be displayed on the Main Market Square. This time the letters will be shown in a completely new form. The project refers to the Avant-Garde Year and the works by Polish avant-garde artists. This year’s project has been conceived by Tomasz Budzyń – a designer, a curator and a graduate of the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts (in Industrial Design).
What else can the fans of literature and fine arts expect? Already in September you can visit the exhibition A new region of the world at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Modern Art. The impulse for the creation of the exhibition was Joseph Conrad’s trip down the River Congo. The works on display are rooted in a concrete experience, and shed light on the mechanism of exclusion, both globally and in Poland. The exhibition has been inspired by the intellectual legacy of such thinkers as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, James Baldwin, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Paul Gilroy or Achille Mbembe. A disillusioned analysis of the contemporary times merged with a belief that the building of ethical future is possible. It is based on looking at another human being as a subject and the overwhelming feeling that we share the same human fate. Olga Stanisławska, a journalist and reportage writer is the exhibition curator. The exhibition is open until 12 November. During the Conrad Festival we invite you to a guided sit with the curator Olga Stanisławska and Jean-Ulrick Désert (28 October). For more click here.
Today at 18:00 you are invited to the opening of the exhibition Singularity at the Museum of Photography at Józefitów 16 Street. The exhibition comprises around 130 photographs carefully selected from the Museum collection. Many intriguing images stirring a debate about the definition of art have been created as a result of the author’s error, ineptitude or simply by chance. Often photographic pictures created by chance get the value of something unimaginable, break the viewer’s feeling of visual comfort. Singularity is a project which proposes a new and attractive formula of thinking about photography. The exhibition and the publication have been designed in collaboration with the students of the Polish-Japanese Academy of Computer Technologies.The exhibition at the Museum will be accompanied by an outdoor exhibition in the urban space (citylight tram/bus stop sheds).
Exhibition Curators: Bartosz Flak, Marta Miskowiec.
Exhibition is open until 31 December. For more click here.
For two weeks the Wyspiański Pavilion will be turned into a Tower of Babel where you will have the opportunity to admire an interactive comic exhibition A long, long time ago…, with suggestive graphic artworks. Serge Bloch and Frédéric Boyer will take you to the world of epic created 3000 years ago. The exhibition space divided into nine artistic audiovisual installations will show the creation of the world in 3D, a fifty-metre-long mural and the re-created and re-interpreted Tower of Babel. The most moving stories of the Old Testament will be shown in Bloch’s modern black-and-white drawings and excerpts from Boyer’s text. The authors’ suggestive, fresh interpretation shows the timeless biblical stories talking about freedom and responsibility, war and power, expulsion and migrations. A meeting and workshops with Serge Bloch will also be organised during the Festival.
We invite you to the opening of the exhibition on 27 October at 19:00. The exhibition will be open until 12 November. For more click here.
No doubt, today „Ryms” is the leading Polish magazine about literature for children and youth. Its content and intellectual depth is enhanced by its beautiful form seen already when looking at the cover.
Excellent draughters, such as: Jan Bajtlik, Maciej Blaźniak, Patricija Bliuj-Stodulska, Katarzyna Bogucka, Anna Chmielnik, Aleksandra Cieślak, Agata Dudek, Joanna Gębal, Marta Ignerska, Agata Juszczak, Tomasz Kaczkowski, Agata Królak, Katarzyna Olbrycht, Ola Szmida and Józef Wilkoń have collaborated with „Ryms”.
On the 10th anniversary of the magazine, all the covers of so far published issues of the magazine are on display at the exhibition 10 Years of Ryms in the basement of Bona bookshop. The opening of the exhibition will take place on 26 October at 16:00. It will be combined with a workshop lead by Katarzyna Olbrycht and a meeting with Marta Lipczyńska. The exhibition will be open to visitors until 6 November. For more click here.
The Dark Matter installation is a space that invites the viewer to a mysterious and unknown world. As you enter the space of the installation you will see an interactive light sculpture in the foreground, reactive to human presence. The sculpture was designed by a Budapest-based visual artist – Viktor Vicsek. It changes its form through modification of activated lights depending on the number and position of visitors. The sculpture is immersed in the movable text which seems alive and volatile. The world we see is filled with ambient sound, to enhance the impression of being separated from reality and hovering in a mysterious, dark and disturbing dimension. The installation is a joint project of the Hungarian artist Viktor Vicsek and the Elektro Moon duo of new media artists. It was inspired by the theme of this year’s Conrad Festival – Unrest. The exhibition will be open from 23 to 29 October. For more click here.
The Günter Grass Gallery in Gdańsk is a home to one of the world’s largest collections of artworks (141 works) by the Nobel Prize winning writer, who passed away in 2015. Grass’ art is inextricably connected with his writing. His graphic works, drawings and sculptures are by no means illustrations to literature in a strict sense. They are rather some kinds of pictorial supplement to the content, visualisation of motifs, metaphors and concepts Grass describes in detail in his books. The exhibition Gunter Grass – Gdańsk collection on the way, prepared on the 90th anniversary of the writers’ birth, presents selected graphic works and sculptures from the Gdańsk collection of his works. In Krakow it will be on display in the Nuremberg House from 24 October to 17 December. For more click here.
