Two days after my first jab of Pfizer and barely a week after Art Basel, I boarded an overnight Flixbus from Vienna to Warsaw bearing what little dignity I had left.
Heading straight to Warsaw Gallery Weekend, the annual event now in its eleventh edition that brings together some of the city’s leading cultural institutions, galleries and museums, the autumn slate of exhibitions seemed timed to coincide with a public eager to experience art in real life again.
The whirlwind few days in the Polish capital was fueled by more than a few swigs of Soplica, the sugary flavoured vodka available on nearly every street corner and in late night kiosks aptly called alkoholes, the liver torture made only slightly more palatable by virtue of some interesting art.
Welcoming hoards of wine-thirsty VIPs, theory-mongering curators and Polo-clad collectors, the weekend’s highlights included a sold-out performance by the demi-goddess of socially engaged feminist performance art, Katarzyna Kozyra, which quickly dispelled any idea that this would be a watered-down affair.
With collectors and art advisors arriving from nearby Germany and Austria, the sunny weekend in Warsaw started early - Thursday to be exact, where the red-bottom Loubouton’s of curator and art advisor Marie Eve Lafontaine could be seen cutting deals till late.
Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Propaganda, Muzeum Farmacji Oddział Muzeum Warszawy Piwna 31/33, 1 October - 31 October
One of the most interesting shows of the weekend belonged to a Pole obsessed with plants. In an exhibition by Tomasz Kulka, organized by Propaganda inside Warsaw’s Pharmacy Museum, the artist looked at how mysterious plant hybrids form within man-altered ecosystems. The resulting exhibition takes hold in beautifully crafted glass vitrines alongside vials of substances ranging from opium to uranium to ether. The unruly juxtapositions of herbs and medicines inspired a group of gilded panel paintings, several of which were on display and sold on opening day. In scenes of brightly coloured flora and fauna, the inconvenience of planet pandemia seemed a world away.
Inscriptions of Identity, Affinity, Difference, Gesture, Biuro Wystaw, Krakowskie Przedmiescie 16/18, 30 September - 30 November
Barely 24 hours into Warsaw Gallery Weekend, an announcement came through the wire of the results of the open-call for the Polish Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice in 2022, with the jury selecting Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s “Re-enchanting the World” proposed by curators Wojciech Szymański and Joanna Warsza. Migra-Tas’s tapestries, previously on view in the 11th Berlin Biennale and 3rd Autostrada Biennale, are largely a hommage to the extraordinary lives of Romani women done in materials belonging to them. At Biuro Wystaw, one of her large tapestries is displayed in a group show alongside several other promising feminist artists including Zuzanna Hertzberg and Natalia Romik, both of whom often work with themes relating to the body and labour, memory and reclaiming socialist and feminist histories.
Polish Environs, Raster, Wspolna 63, 30 September 30 - 27 November
Raster Gallery, one of Warsaw’s most widely known and respected galleries home to a stable of innovative and interesting artists like Janek Simon and Slavs and Tatars, launched a new sculpture courtyard in the back of their Wspolna street space. The packed event on Saturday night drew a large crowd who all came to rub the bronze bust of a woman looking away. If there’s one thing Polish artists know, it’s how to brood.
You Are Too Close, Gunia Nowik Gallery, Bracka 18/62, 30 September - 20 November
As part of this year’s gallery weekend, Gunia Nowik Gallery presented a solo exhibition of the up and coming bad boy of contemporary Polish art, Jakub Gliński, known for his provocative and wryly angst-ridden approaches to art by way of destruction and performance. With themes like decay and civilizational waste dominating Gliński’s practice, the works on display were of several large canvases made using an intuitive trash and error approach, with the gallery also hosting one of the best (and booziest) parties during gallery weekend at Wozownia Bar with DJ sets by Avtomat and Daisy Cutter.
Dust, Lokal_30, Wilcza 29a/12, 30 September - 19 November
Over at Lokal_30, the gallery hosted a book launch and exhibition by the multimedia artist and filmmaker Karolina Breguła. Kuba Szreder, curator and author of the recently translated in English reader on post-artistic practices, ABC of the Projectariat, led a packed vernissage through the major themes of the exhibition and Bregula’s work.
Manhattan, Import / Export, Ujazdow Avenue 22/3, 30 September - 30 October
In the second show in as many months at Import Export, a new Polish gallery focusing on international artists founded this past August by art dealer Sonia Jakimczyk and collector Piotra Bazylko, a new series of photographs and installations by Mia Dudek filled the second floor of their Vistula Gothic location, one of the few remaining pre-WWII buildings left in Warsaw. The show combines Dudek’s longstanding interest in architecture and photography, with images depicting socialist architecture and domestic life. These are displayed alongside digital pictures of rare earth mushrooms and a bathtub teething with resin and polyurethane foam. The show is the second for the gallery after its first dual-artist exhibition, which featured the queen of Napolitan pop-realism SAGG Napoli, who together with Stefania Batoeva came to Warsaw last month to paint and work together in situ, eventually shooting the means of their own production with bows and arrows.