01 Nov 2011

'Eyes Looking for a Head to Inhabit' at Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz

The project Eyes Looking For a Head to Inhabit is related to a historical event: the inauguration of the International Collection of Modern Art of the 'a.r.' group at the Municipal Museum of History and Art in �?ódź on the 15th February 1931. The basis of this, then locally underestimated initiative, were the ideas of international avant-garde developed by Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro and their fight for social recognition of new art. As a result, 80 years ago a new institution was established – the present-day Muzeum Sztuki in �?odź, the first museum of modern art in Europe that still exists.


The title Eyes Looking For a Head to Inhabit is a metaphor referring to taking over physical and mental spaces by the avant-garde. It speaks of outlining new directions of thinking, about attempts of rooting them in society. It evokes the disagreement with the status quo and the sense of mission to create „new art'. Celebrating the eightieth anniversary of the collection's inauguration we attempt to enter a dialogue with the selected avant-garde traditions by means of contemporary art. According to the demands of those avant-garde traditions, art should be a laboratory where artists construct prototypes of new social devices, solutions to build a better-functioning and progressive world. The exhibition, focused around selected moments of 'intensity', presents ways in which avant-garde ideas were transformed, transgressed or radically questioned.

Eyes Looking For a Head to Inhabit consists of three exhibitions in separate buildings which used to house or house Muzeum Sztuki: the old City Hall (the current seat of the State Archive) as well as ms1 and ms² – the current seats of the Museum. Selecting these venues is determined by the story of moving the International Collection of Modern Art of the 'a.r.' group that was a founding factor for the Museum. The exhibition at ms² questions the avant-garde belief in progress and its desire to control nature to gain 'victory over the sun'. At the State Archive, where the „a. r.' group first presented their collection to the �?ódź audiences, the current function of the building – working on the city's memory – is intertwined with the local history of the avant-garde and its fight to overcome social alienation. The projects at ms1 refer to the unfulfilled potential of the museum as a place that is not keeping up with contemporary cultural production, while making an attempt at imagining a different dimension of its activity in order to revisit the prevailing notions of individual authorship, distribution and reception of artworks.

Artists participating in the exhibition: Nevin Aladağ, Victor Alimpiev, Francisco Infante-Arana, Merce Cunningham / John Cage, Valdis Celms, Anetta Mona Chişa / Lucia Tkáčová, Velimir Khlebnikov / Aleksei Kruchonykh/ Kasimir Malevitsch / Mikhail Matyushin, Le Corbusier / Edgar Varese / Iannis Xenakis, Andrzej Czarnacki, Josef Dabernig, Valie Export, Wojciech Fangor, Stano Filko, Vadim Fiškin, Leszek Golec / Tatiana Czekalska, Barbara Hammer, Haus-Rucker-Co, Rebecca Horn, Nikita Kadan, Frederick Kiesler, Katarzyna Kobro, Julius Koller, Paweł Kowzan, Yuri Leiderman, El Lissitzky, Artur Malewski, Daniel Malone, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gustav Metzger, László Moholy-Nagy, Carsten Nicolai, Roman Ondak, Ruth Oppenheim, Anna Orlikowska, Gabriel Orozco, Walter Pichler, Agnieszka Piksa, Klaus Pinter, Adrian Piper, Jerzy Rosołowicz, Jadwiga Sawicka, �?ukasz Skąpski, Władysław Strzemiński, Marijke van Warmerdam, Monika Zawadzki.

Curators: Aleksandra Jach, Katarzyna Słoboda, Joanna Sokołowska, Magdalena Ziółkowska


Venues:

State Archive in Lodz:
monday, wednesday - friday: 9.00 a.m. – 3.00 p.m.

tuesday: 9.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.


ms², Ogrodowa 19:

tuesday: 10.00 am. – 6.00 p.m.

wednesday – sunday: 11.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.



ms1, library, Więckowskiego 36:
tuesday, wednesday, friday: 11.00 a.m. – 3.30 p.m.

thursday: 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m.