Zachęta Lower Silesian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts and Wrocław Contemporary Museum invite you to the opening of the exhibition titled “there is / there isn’t” on the 27th of November 2015 (Friday) at 6pm. The opening will take place at Wroclaw Contemporary Museum located in the shelter at Strzegomski Square 2a.

The exhibition titled “there is / there isn’t” comprises works made at different times – from Anna Kutera’s pieces dating back to 1978, to works by Wojciech Pukocz and Tom Swoboda that were made in the last two, three years. The collection is characterised by formal differentiation, a variety of strategies of appropriating the space and the viewer’s attention, and diverse raisons d’être of individual pieces. By presenting them inside Wrocław Contemporary Museum, we encourage the visitors to ponder various narratives that are woven at different tempos as well as questions concerning the (un)predictability of life and the processes initiated by it. It is also an attempt to capture the presence or absence of spiritus movens, as described in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

By accentuating the polyphony of the collection, we accentuate its inwardness. We pose questions about the essence of collecting or buying art, about the course of processes triggered by the decision to purchase certain works and make them part of a collection. The presentation of the selected pieces in one venue is the result of collaboration between different bodies and commissions of the Zachęta Lower Silesian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. This ostentatiously obvious mechanism of including new works in the collection, which is both indispensable and silently looming in the background, constitutes an interesting starting point for the curators to outline a gentle sketch of the idea of a museum’s functioning, which organises our thinking about what art is.

Curators of the exhibition:
Przemek Pintal, Michał Grzegorzek

Cooperation:
Iwona Kałuża

Exhibition design:
Hubert Kielan

Artists:
Wojtek Doroszuk, Anna Kutera, Katarzyna Kmita, Leszek Knaflewski, Wojciech Pukocz, Janek Simon, Paweł Sokołowski, Tom Swoboda, Urszula Wilk