Views 2005

This year the Deutsche Bank Foundation Award for the most interesting young contemporary Polish artist went to Maciej Kurak. In 2003, the first edition of this competition for the most interesting young contemporary Polish artists took place at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art. This summer, a jury composed of art critics and curators nominated the following artists and groups for the award’s second edition: Azorro, Michal Budny, Rafal Bujnowski, Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga, Maciej Kurak, Robert Kusmirowski, and Anna Orlikowska. The exhibition Views 2005 presents their works. The results of the competition were announced on November 21, 2005, at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art.

The main source of inspiration for Maciej Kurak is architecture. His work is situated between socially committed intervention and jest. A viewer attending Kurak’s exhibition usually feels surprised. Exaggerated representation of an accidentally witnessed situation, or the use of paradox are methods often employed by the artist. Their purpose is to draw our attention to some social problem, or a forgotten piece of history imprinted on the fabric of the city. Direct interventions into specific buildings or interiors marked with past contexts are frequent in Kurak’s art. At another time, he creates strange buildings, underground or under-floor spaces – sometimes shelters, sometimes frightening dark pits. For Views 2005, Kurak has decided to confront the monumentality of one of the Zacheta’s rooms, with its baggage of the history of Polish art, with the trivial cosiness of a standard flat built into it. Narration within narration, distortion of the decorum rules – those ar e Kurak’s favourite strategies. The built-in apartment is strange. It can be entered from the exhibition room through a window, framed with a stylised old wooden frame – as if one was entering a painting. Odd pieces of furniture and a carpet, constituting all of the flat’s furnishings (some of them are cut in half) throw the viewer into a somewhat surreal confusion. Thanks to Maciej Kurak’s work, every viewer can for a moment become the chief character of a painting.

Honourable mention was awarded to Anna Orlikowska (Scholarschip Residence in Berlin in 2006).

Exhibition organized by: Deutsche Bank Foundation, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Deutsche Bank Polska S.A.

Pressetext

Views 2005
Deutsche Bank Foundation Award
The Second Edition
Kurator Magda Kardasz
Kooperation Julia Leopold

Preisträger: Maciej Kurak
Honourable mention : Anna Orlikowska

nominiert wurden Azorro , Michal Budny, Rafal Bujnowski, Aneta Grzeszykowska & Jan Smaga, Maciej Kurak, Robert Kusmirowski, Anna Orlikowska