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Around Sol LeWitt
13.10-18.11.2018

Nicolai Angelov, Andrew Colbert, Michał Frydrych, Norbert Grunschel, Ha Cha Youn, Kornel Janczy, Sol LeWitt, Otto Reitsperger, Daniel Schörnig


The narrative of the exhibition is based on two works by Sol LeWitt, which are a starting point for a dialogue with contemporary artists who benefit from the achievements of minimalism and conceptualism. Each of them works in a different way and understands the assumptions of these directions differently.


Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007) had a huge influence on the world's understanding and development of conceptualism and minimal art, primarily due to his distanced attitude towards the concept of missionary art, as well as the role of the artist as a magician or shaman of art. The key was LeWitt's break with theories of abstract expressionism, whose foundations created in the United States by Clement Greenberg gave art and artist an almost mystical meaning. LeWitt’s realisations with its optic-structural games were a reflection of the idea that the concept itself can be a work of art.


Structural, minimal, often close to op-art, works of Sol LeWitt are a starting point for artists' to whom the idea of reducing the means of expression, synthesising and clarity of the composition, operating with basic geometrical forms, cutting off the emotionality of abstract painting, is important. Artists play with the form and optic-perceptive possibilities of the image, experiment with textures, examine the possibilities of constructing the work of art, often based on the simplest artistic means. The exhibition included works by artists who have collaborated with Sol LeWitt and continue to execute his projects. LeWitt left written instructions and sketches on the creation of his works - what is important, each artist can understand them differently and implement them differently. It gives many possibilities, however, closed in the conceptual structure constructed by LeWitt. Since the early 1960s, LeWitt has been shattering plastic elements into a number of separate segments. In this way, he explored the visual possibilities of individual forms.

 

Repeatability and a multitude of possibilities derived from one shape are interesting for the Korean artist Ha Cha Youn, who is experimenting on the material of plastic bags. The artist constructs beautiful objects for which the starting point is an idea, research, conceptualisation of matter. In turn, Kornel Janczy builds minimalist structures in accordance with the idea close to Sol LeWitt that art can be generated by ideas, not emotions. He is interested in how the existing knowledge, visualised in the forms of numbers, calculations or data sets, is transformed into a visual language. Michał Frydrych made a wall installation based on minimalist forms and colours. This work shows that the language of minimalism is also suitable for commenting on social reality. Daniel Schörnig, Norbert Grunschel, Andrew Colbert and Nicolai Angelov are artists who, during the lifetime of Sol LeWitt, collaborated with him and implemented his projects. They make use of the legacy of minimalism in different ways, but each has found its own artistic path, still associated with minimal art, however diverse and individual. Colbert operates on activities close to op-art, Schörnig builds structures oscillating between a flat surface and three-dimensional surface. Two works by Norbert Grunschl show that the same artist can experiment on the matter of art in extremely different ways. Otto Reitsperger combines a geometric minimal with optical games and typography. In turn, Nicolai Angelov's sculpture, presented in Lescer earlier, is a display experiment - because the presence of minimal art is also interesting for her relationship with the gallery space.




Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland under the program Kultura Dostępna.

 Partners of the exhibition: Fundacja Odrodzenie, Piaseczno municipality, Book & Art,Grupa CSV, LEDVANCE.

 

Curator: Ewa Sułek

Producer: Paweł Zaręba