exhibited by gallery program:


■  viennafair  / group 2007
■  art cologne  / group 2007
■  artefiera / group 2007
■  kunst zurich  / group 2006
■  open space cologne  / solo 2006
■  art cologne  / group 2006
■  scope london / group 2006
■  underground / solo 2006
■  night of museums / group 2006
■  viennafair  / group 2006
■  artefiera / group 2006
■  preview berlin / group 2005
■  inc / group 2004
artcube.fpsw.pl - action

links :


■ lodzkaliska.pl
■ artfacts.net
■ culture.pl
■ lodz-art.pl
■ csw.art.pl
■ spam.art.pl
■ culture.pl
■ exit.pl
■ tworzywo.blox.pl
■ artbiznes.pl
■ fotal.pl
■ fototapeta.art.pl
■ blowup.core.pl
■ fotopolis.pl
■ onet.pl
■ tworzywo.blox.pl
■ artifex.uksw.edu.pl
■ teatry.art.pl

The group Łódź Kaliska was established in 1979 in its namesake town, Łódź. Since its foundation, members have included Marek Janiak, Andrzej Kwietniewski, Adam Rzepecki, Andrzej Świetlik and Makary (Andrzej Wielogórski). Formed in 1979 under a cloud of scandal, it was originally a neo-vanguard art group with an aim of exploring the photo-media aspect of seeing and reception that originated within Conceptualism, in the domain of photography, experimental film and performance.
In 1980-81 the group changed its focus more on Dada-ist happenings and a message of Surrealist anarchism. This agenda sought to attack and ridicule the Polish Neo-Vanguard scene as well as depict the absurdity of life under socialism. Kwietniewski and Janiak wrote a host of manifestos during this period, including Janiak’s manifesto on "Embarassing Art" which would play a pivotal role in the 1990s. From 1982 until around 1988 the Łódź Kaliska group was a part of the Whip-In Culture (Kultura Zrzuty) movement. The movement’s artistic activities centered round the independent galleries of Łódź, amongst which the most important was Łódź Kaliska’s Attic (Strych Łodzi Kaliskiej). Whip-In Culture combined their declining photo-media and conceptual interests with Dada-ist activities . In seeking to merge art with everyday life, many of these activities were often non-art in character. In addition to the country's socialist structures, the paintings of the New Primitives as well as the patriotic Church-centered art were attacked and ridiculed. Two journals functioned as a locus of the group's activities: the independent journal Tango, and earlier The Attic Chronicles (Kroniki Strychu).
At the end of 1980s, the group came out of the artistic underground. They participated in the exhibition Polish Inter-Media Photography in the 1980s (Polska Fotografia Intermedialna Lat 80-tyc, BWA, Poznań 1988). The re-enacted erotic photographs and the film entitled Freiheit. Nein Danke! was both a scandal and an artistic success. In 1989 the name of the group was changed from Łódź Kaliska to The Museum of Łódź Kaliska (MUZEUM ŁODZI KALISKIEJ), or Łódź Kaliska – the Museum (ŁÓDŹ KALISKA MUZEUM). The Dadaistic approach was ”amalgamated” with an interest with postmodernism. Pastiched photographs and films derived from famous artworks and cinematography constituted the subject matter at this time. The grotesque continued to feature in the group's photography during the later 1990s. Elements of sarcasm and fun were increasingly evident. Formally their images referenced the Modernist photography from the turn of the 20th century as well as Edward Muybridge’s scientific photographs of the late 19th century and the works of Italian futurists. Among the numerous subjects of the group’s works, there have always been religious and social themes, a critique of Polish reality. At the beginning of the 1980s, Łódź Kaliska criticized the Polish superficial religiosity and idea of patriotism. Later on, the works on the subject became more ludic and playful. This can also be said about many other subjects undertaken as aspects of exploring the history of culture as a comical '[storehouse] of forms', from which one can draw freely, since the division between the sacred and the profane has been blurred or even forgotten. Since the late 1990s, thanks to, among others, television productions (the triptych– I Remember, I Remember, I Remember…), Łódź Kaliska has become part of the mass-media and political establishment. Nevertheless, everything in their artistic work, including the artists themselves and their muses (models), has retained an element of enduring humor with a hedonistic message. In 1998, members of the group were arrested at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence after an illegal photographic session next to Botticelli’s "The Birth of Venus".
1999 marked the group's twentieth anniversary and to celebrate Janiak constructed an installation entitled Pure/Clean Art (CZYSTA SZTUKA) from an out-of-order toilet of the Art Museum in Łódź. In the same year, the group published a commemorative album entitled God Envies Us Our Mistakes (BÓG ZAZDROŚCI NAM POMYŁEK). While the publication was unique in many respects, particularly design, many institutions shied away from it. In 2001, the group participated in the famous exhibition Irreligious (IRRELIGIA) in Brussels curated by Kazimierz Piotrowski. In 2003 they exhibited the first works expressing Janiak's New Pop undertones. New Pop, like its predecessor Pop Art, refers to popular culture's 'icono-sphere', the surrounding visual atmosphere, which includes for example advertisements. Their session for Playboy caused a considerable stir in 2004 as rightwing circles condemned the work for blaspheming Poland’s national emblem: the crowned eagle. Łódź Kaliska continues to work on New Pop, and recent projects have included Identical Twins (IDENTYCZNE BLIŹNIĘTA) and a series of pastiche advertisements simply entitled Posters. (essay from  Krzysztof Jurecki, grupa "Lodz Kaliska",  http://www.culture.pl/pl/culture/artykuly/gr_lodz_kaliska )

■  presentation of works                                                                                         

NEW POP

New Pop -Bread 2005  -offsetprint on paper, 70 x 100 cm  signed edition of 10 pcs
/ unsigned edition 60 pcs /   ■  more works

 
 MANIFESTO I OF THE NEW POP ART
 
Identical gestures
Identical  ice cream
Identical sky
Identical swimming caps
Identical bras and underpants

With only one stipulation
- one of the women has two left hands
(altogether 3, including the right hand)

Stop the racial traits analysis,
segregation. chauvinism and nationalism.

There is only one human community.
We are all the same.
We all like ice cream.

Hands off women!
 

                                                                                      
NEW POP NEW DEAL
the current doctrine of Łódź Kaliska
PhD Kazimierz Piotrowski 2004
texts from the exhibition   ■ INC
Gallery PROGRAM

For at least two years, the Łódź Kaliska Group are working hard to change their image. It is to be a far-reaching change, a complete break with the anarchic or nihilistic traditions that date back to the times when the reality did not inspire empathy since the survival depended on the ability to create distance. Their programme, formerly akin to neodadaism and currently developed mainly by Janiak in New Pop manifestos, perfectly fits into the current changes in the creative intelligentsia who finally seem to discover the elementary pragmatism, as in the following confession of a post-existentialist: I do not intend to wage existential battles anymore (of rebellion, despair, curse) because they spoil my mood. I do not want to experience fright and trembling hands anymore because I’m afraid I will get a nervous breakdown. This enumeration is by no means exhaustive. To refer to all these intellectual or existential illnesses, Janiak would use the term cynicism including in this term the cynicism proper as well as nationalism or racism. That is the reason, why New Pop should be at the same time construed as New Deal – a new social agreement, new deal out on the market of ideas in the post-communist country, where the artist becomes a dealer. They openly admit that after so many years, money would be useful for Łódź Kaliska so they employ a young woman to be their manager as they do like women and ice cream. We all like ice-cream – says the author of New Pop manifesto and let’s forgive him this overstatement as well as any other fetishisation of objects, because the human welfare is at stakes. In the era of advertisements, labelling, commercials, and advertising, with corporations taking over the public sphere, there is no other option but to self-advertise through doing advertising of others, which leads to a new social order, new social love and new rationalization of life that has to acknowledge that thinking should be even more integrated with pleasure. Łódź Kaliska New Pop introduces us to this social ideal – maybe even a new utopia of a country based on corporate solidarity, which should be at last cut off from the ecclesiastical or fascists roots in the contest of EU integration.
Disinterestedly, like other artists, they incorporate corporate identities such as this of Coca-Cola’s, and they offer their services to Playboy Magazine in order to foster this process of making the world more beautiful and saturated with a new popularity. The logic underlying this process is that of advertising, where the categories of as if general human aesthetics are revitalized. However, in the case of masculine Łódź Kaliska it’s definitely sexism flavoured aesthetics. Isn’t it impertinent to dedicate “Fridge” to the women who will soon pass their “use by” date? To whom then the words “Hands off the women!” are directed in First New Pop Art manifesto? Certainly not to Playboy’s editors. The point is that in art as advertising or in advertising as art, the level of public debate should be increased as much as possible. When we free all the consummate dreams, male fantasies included here, we should at the same time save from ideological objectification these desires that are identified by the cynical (according to Janiak) awareness with either a natural right of a man to dominate a woman or quite the reverse with unjust patriarchalism, phallocentrism or sexism that justifies female rebellion. But in this case, however, these reproofs are totally preposterous – remarkably cynical, since they destroy the natural consumer diversity and the possibility of mutual amicability. What needs to be done, is to preserve this diversity of consumer needs and natural divides among clientele, and at the same time to make the social system more effective and more human friendly. Isn’t the need to associate and co-operate the strongest of human desires? This is achieved most effectively by means of self-advertising through advertising of others. And who has done more for women – de facto always bustling around advertising – than Łódź Kaliska that introduces new perspectives in art and advertising to traditional Poland. This was especially noticeable in the case of celebrated and unnecessarily shocking for the public opinion, personification of the Polish national emblem designed by Kwietniewski. The noble bird – no-one knows why up to that moment considered to be a male - evolved into a beautiful she-eagle, and what is more, it happened on the cover of the as if sexist Playboy (sic). The thing is, good advertising and art are situated outside the logic of cynical reasoning, which just for the sake of some ideology, would be willing to turn away from ingenuity, sense of humour and beauty and particularly from the modern idea of associating and co-operating between individuals and various corporations. The latter bearing nowadays the responsibility greater than previously, since year after year they become more and more powerful.

 

The Burning Chariot I, 2003  -photography, plexi, aluminium board, 47 x 60 cm signed edition of 6 pcs                               ■  more works
 

                                                                                                                
UNDERGROUND / Identical Twins III




Boom, 2006 / series Identical Twins (3)  -photography, plexi, lamina, 127 x 180 cm
signed edition of 6 pcs     ■  more works







Swing, 2006 / series Identical Twins (3)  -photography, plexi, lamina, 127 x 180 cm
signed edition of 6 pcs      ■  more works

                                                                                        
INTRODUCTION
Andrzej Kwietniewski 2006
texts from the catalogue for exhibitions
■ UNDERGROUND in Gallery PROGRAM
Ladies and gentlemen, all people of real art.
It’s not important if you’re a viewer or an artist- we are all lucky to live right here and now, which means in the world of identical and aesthetic twins.
For only a twin world of doubled artistic ideas and doubled visual sensations can be twice as beautiful and twice as fair.
In this world of harmonious order and beautiful harmony, all creative successes are twice as important. But all rubbish and kitsch are condemned even more. So let us extend a heartfelt thanks to our twins, for each day they reveal what is worthy of greatness or not.
Twice as wonderful is this world, there’s nothing to say!
Twice as beautiful and is twice as noble are these double twins.
Let the cloned Mona Lisa live!
Let the two supreme courts endure!
Andrzej Kwietniewski (edited by A. Bates)

UNDERGROUND
curator Aneta Marcinkowska-Muszynska 2006
texts from  the catalogue for exhibition
■ UNDERGROUND in Gallery PROGRAM
Characteristics of similarity, often misinterpreted as sameness, constitute the so-called twin resemblance. Multiplied similarities in visual imagery often camouflage interior differences. Such multiplication erases borders between this and that, between the individual and the group. In a group, the inevitable consequences of multiplication include reduced responsibility or divided participation. The man in a mass may seek his identity or essence, but all he encounters is inescapable sameness. Despite journeying away from uniqueness and individualism, he may be surprised by the relief that the sameness within a group offers. Such a group offers a certain freedom as problems are transferred and the task of searching is relinquished. Of course this later leads to conflicts, but for the interim it is salvation. Relinquishing responsibility is an opiate.  Nagging problems dissolve. They become distant and shapeless. Current events teeter between seriousness and mockery. They are captured between cynicism and gentle forgiveness. They stand face to face with absurdity. Thus marching in a crowd under the flapping of important slogans, without thinking we become a wave. At first gently evening out, before blurring inevitably into a single sign… Text by Aneta Marcińskowska – Muszyńska (edited by A.Bates)

  Sisters 1990 /2005  -  photography, plexi, aluminium board, 110 x 140 cm  signed edition of 6 pcs  /  no.1 sold                  ■  more works

   The Battle of Grunwald, 1999 /2005   -  photography, plexi, aluminium board, 72 x 200 cm  signed edition of 6 pcs        ■  more works

 
New Pop -Batumi 2005  -offsetprint on paper, 70 x 100 cm  signed edition of 10 pcs
/ unsigned edition 50 pcs /   ■  more works


New Pop -The night Store 2005  -offsetprint on paper, 70 x 100 cm  signed edition of 10 pcs  / unsigned edition 50 pcs /   ■  more works