Jerzy Kalina
Unleash Art
Jerzy Kalina is mainly renowned for his public-space practices taking place in recent years. It is hard to believe that this artist, present on the scene for five decades, has not yet had a major exhibition in a public gallery in Warsaw. Therefore, the exhibition at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art is a retrospective and the artist’s first such comprehensive solo show in Warsaw. The main emphasis has been placed on works from the 1970s and 1980s, created in the neo-avant-garde vein, which Kalina imbued with an original spirit derived from the romantic tradition of Polish culture. This already historical set of works is complemented by selected projects created after 1989 and in recent years. The presented works are accompanied by extensive photographic and textual documentation, building a broad context of the artistic and social life of the last decades of Communism and the first decades of the Third Polish Republic. The aim of the exhibition is also to show the diversity and multi-generity, as it were, of Kalina’s work, whose achievements include projects realised in many media: painting, sculpture, action, installation, but also theatre, film animation, and sound.
This is an exhibition that, in the form of a unique presentation of Kalina’s work, invites the viewer to become familiar with the artist’s creative path from its very beginning: from the first sketches and performances at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts to the latest unrealised projects (for example, the competition exhibition design for the Polish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale). Most of the works will be on show for the first time. These include several hundred drawings, costume and stage designs, documentation of architectural and sculptural projects, installations, and performances. There is also a unique series of erotic poems, Ball Lightning, in which Kalina amazes and delights with the spontaneity and intimacy of his line. A special place is devoted to an installation dedicated to the Katyn Massacre, together with project documentation of the creation of the Katyn Museum in Warsaw. The exhibition also includes Kalina’s characteristic objects and installations.
Unleash Art is a formula that can be applied to Kalina’s entire creative path. He gives his art priority over all other manifestations of existence, showing its full meaning, violence, and power of impact. Kalina frees art from stifling ideological oppressions and political correctness. His work is an unwavering declaration of courage, truth, beauty, uncompromisingness, penetrating sensitivity, as well as a demonstration of taming and subordinating the matter of reality. The huge number of manifestations of Kalina’s artistic work creates the impression that he never takes rest from art. Art is his inalienable way of being and experiencing the world. In the visual setting of the exhibition, this is reflected in the aesthetics of messages as if from a construction site, which are a record of the permanent process of creation.
The topics covered by Kalina are among the most difficult, requiring courage and the ability to balance between the awareness of risk in tackling a serious, socially sensitive topic and the communicativeness of the work, between the transparency of the message and the metaphorical nature of its form. Kalina draws on the most painful, difficult, and sensitive moments in Polish history, such as national uprisings or the Smolensk disaster. He also does not hesitate to speak up in defence of moral authorities. Kalina is able to talk about difficult topics that are vital for our national, religious, or social identity without artificial pathos or banal didacticism. This makes his art not only uniquely “Polish,” but also universal, accessible to anyone who does not renounce their own memory, history, and emotions.
Curator
Krystyna Różańska-Gorgolewska
