Paulina Olowska @ Pace Gallery, London - "Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas" Exhibition

Paulina Olowska

Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas 

Pace Gallery, London

22 November 2023 – 6 January 2024

PAULINA OLOWSKA

Dziewannas (After Branislav Šimončík), 2023

Oil on canvas, 310 cm x 210 cm 

© Paulina Olowska, courtesy Pace Gallery

Marking PAULINA OLOWSKA’s debut exhibition with Pace since joining the gallery’s programme in 2022, the artist showcases a suite of paintings, collages, film, and sound installation across the entirety of Pace’s Hanover Square gallery in London. Centring female perspectives and narratives, Olowska’s presentation will develop her explorations into Slavic folklore, mythology, and the collective capabilities of, and our intrinsic connection to, nature.

Titled after Paulina Olowska’s eponymous video installation, first included in the artist’s 2022 exhibition at Kistefos Museum in Norway, Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas reimagines Slavic mythological deities and demons in new modernist lights. The Mamuna, literally translated from Polish as strangewife, is a female swamp demon closely associated with rivers, streams, and thickets. Historically characterised as menacing, Paulina Olowska portrays her Mamunas as earthly androgynous nymphs, more magical than malicious.

Large-scale paintings, each titled after deities from the Slavic pantheon, feature Paulina Olowska’s Mamuna-muses gathered amongst the birch and pine forests of northern Europe. By using found photography as the basis for her compositions, the artist subverts mass media and fine art to recover female figures from their mythological pasts. In these paintings, women commune with their surroundings, with themselves, and with the viewer.

Throughout the upper two galleries of the exhibition, Mamunas peer out from a video installation nestled within five woodland hollows. Suggestive of Black Forest cuckoo clocks, carved woodland creatures—including bears, foxes, owls, squirrels, and deer—populate each frame. Kadenówka Bouquet (2023), the only framed painting in the exhibition, is based on an image taken at the Kadenówka in Rabka, home to Artist House Kadenowka Foundation, established by Paulina Olowska in 2019. Designed in 1932 by Adam Kaden, Kadenówka has been home to a health spa, tailoring school, hospital accommodation, and is now run by Paulina Olowska as an artistic and cultural retreat, hosting meetings, lectures, exhibitions, and performances on the subject of sacred knowledge.

Further complicating notions of interior and exterior, two ornate chandeliers will feature in the show. Working in collaboration with the artist Jessica Segall as a continuation of Segall’s Nom Nom Ohm series, Paulina Olowska’s chandeliers uncover the wisdom and the intelligence of the forest. Bedecked with ceramic and handblown glass mushrooms, pinecones, fruits, vegetables, and potatoes, the chandeliers reproduce the reciprocal systems and inter-species networks of communication that structure woods and forests. Research on fungi suggests they can generate electrical signals through their mycelial webs: Paulina Olowska symbolically harnesses this energy to charge her chandeliers and illuminate the exhibition.

In the lower ground floor gallery, Paulina Olowska stages puppets wearing the costumes from her Kistefos performance. The puppets take equal inspiration from Ukrainian Motanka—knotted guardian dolls, made without needle or scissors—and the Polish spring ritual Topienie Marzanny, during which straw Marzanna dolls representing death, winter, and disease, are drowned in the river. Arranged in compositional motifs mirroring those found in the artist’s paintings for the exhibition, and animated by a richly layered woodland soundscape, the handmade mannequins appear corporeal in their softer lighting. The artist’s interest in animism—the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence—informs the exhibition throughout.

PAULINA OLOWSKA's (b. 1976, Gdansk, Poland) multifarious practice spans painting, collage, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. Her work is deeply engaged with the political and social histories of Eastern Europe, American consumerism and pop culture, feminism, and the aesthetics of fashion advertisements. Olowska’s figurative paintings often feature women in a wide range of environments, from offices and shops to farms and jungles, challenging art historical conventions as well as traditional notions of femininity in Eastern and Western cultures. She has had one-person exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and Kistefos Museum, Norway. Olowska received the prestigious Aachen Art Prize in 2014, with an associated exhibition at the Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen, Germany. She has also staged performances at Tate Modern, the Carnegie International and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Olowska presented the ballet “Slavic Goddesses—A Wreath of Ceremonies” at the Kitchen, New York, in 2017 and "Slavic Goddesses and The Ushers” at the Museo del Novecento in Milan in 2018 and at the Kestner Gesellschaft in July 2023. Her work was featured in the 2017 National Gallery of Victoria Triennial in Melbourne and the 2018 Liverpool Biennial, as well as in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; mumok, Vienna; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Migros Museum Für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; New Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London, and LACMA, Los Angeles.

PACE GALLERY LONDON

5 Hanover Square, London W1S 1HQ

www.pacegallery.com

Art Brut in Poland @ Olomouc Museum of Art - Harbours of Unease - Exhibition + Catalogue

Harbours of Unease. Art Brut in Poland

Olomouc Museum of Art

19 October 2023 - 25 February 2024

Ryszard Kosek

Woman, 1980s–1990s

Toothpaste, hardboard, 56 x 32 cm

Andrzej Kwasiborski’s collection, Płock

Dionizy Purta 

Dog, 1993

Wood, polychromy, 27 x 25 x 13 cm

Leszek Macak’s collection, Kraków

Maria Wnęk 

St. Veronica Wiping The Lord’s Face, N/A,

Oil, paper, 60 x 43 cm 

Silesian Museum, Katowice 

Edmund Monsiel 

For the Worshipping of the Madonna of Częstochowa by Believers,1960 

Pencil, paper, 42.7 x 51 cm, 

Leszek Macak’s collection, Kraków

A motionless human face with a moustache and hundreds of watching eyes filling every millimetre of the paper. You can feel the tension, the fear, the anxiety, the eyes are everywhere, watching you until it gives you chills. The pencil drawings of Edmund Monsiel (1897-1962), who hid from the Nazis in the attic of his brother's house in Poland during World War II, depict one theme almost obsessively endlessly. The author eventually became completely isolated, suffering from autism and hallucinations.

This story also illustrates what art brut is - the art of untrained artists growing out of their inner tension, the urge to express themselves. Often these are people with mental issues or living marginalized. Olomouc Museum of Art will present their art at the exhibition Harbours of Unease. Art Brut in Poland. "Raw or crude art - art brut - differs from folk art, which is often linked to craftsmanship, or naive art that captures and often or idealises the surrounding world. Art brut artists draw from their inner self, they have their own inner universe whose vision they transfer into sculptures and paintings," explains the curator Šárka Belšíková. "They don't create for presentation, but out of an inner pressure for their own sake."

Julian Stręk 

Polish Kings’ Gallery, 1990s 

Wood, polychromy, 115 x 98 x 39 cm 

Leszek Macak’s collection, Kraków

Krzysztof Grodzicki 

Adam’s Creation, 2015

Wood, polychrome, 78 x 60 x 15 cm 

Leszek Macak’s collection, Kraków

Stanisław Zagajewski 

An Animal, 1989

Fired clay, 29.5 x 43 x 27 cm 

Andrzej Kwasiborski’s collection, Płock

For the first time ever in the Czech Republic, the Olomouc Museum of Art presents a comprehensive exhibition of Polish art brut. On view are around 200 paintings, drawings and three-dimensional objects by thirty artists from the first half of the 20th century to the present day.

In Poland, as in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, interest in art brut was triggered by a wave of private collecting and survey. "Of particular note is the collection of the Krakow lawyer Lezsek Macak, from which a large part of our exhibition comes. Leszek Macak not only collected the works, but also took care of them and materially helped the creators of art brut, people on the margins, socially disqualified, yet with great creative potential," says Anežka Šimková, co-author of the exhibition. A new generation of collectors and theoreticians has emerged in 1990s who are striving to bring art brut closer to a wider audience and present this phenomenon abroad.

Thanks to these collectors, art brut is gradually becoming part of the world's leading collections and exhibitions. "A groundbreaking event was the inclusion of a selection of works by representatives of art brut and imaginative art from around the world in the main exhibition 55. Venice Biennale in 2013, where the work of the Czech artist Anna Zemánková shone. Another important world event was the inclusion of the gift of the collection of art brut collector Bruno Dechamp in the Centre Georges Pompidou's collection in 2021. The Paris museum has set a separate space for it in the permanent exhibition of modern and contemporary art, where Czech artists Adéla Ducháčová, Vlasta Kodríková, Slávka Lelková and others are also represented," Šimková lists. "Centre Pompidou has set out to make professional research on art brut one of its special long-term projects."

Adam Dembiński

Two Women and a Man, 1980s 

Markers, paper, 29.5 x 41.8 cm

Leszek Macak’s collection, Kraków

Roman Rutkowski 

no title, 2006

Crayon, paper, 100 x 70 cm 

Andrzej Kwasiborski’s collection, Płock

Genowefa Magiera

no title, 2013 

Ferment, cardboard, 79 x 108 cm 

Andrzej Kwasiborski’s collection, Płock

Justyna Matysiak 

Pilgrimage, 2006 

Markers, paper, 23.8 x 30 cm 

Lue Lu / Brut Now Foundation, Poznań

HARBOURS OF UNEASE. ART BRUT IN POLAND - PUBLICATION

The exhibition is also accompanied by the first ever major entry of the topic in the Czech Republic, the Czech-English publication Harbours of Unease. Art Brut in Poland including rich pictorial accompaniment and expert studies. The curators of the exhibition - Šárka Belšíková and Anežka Šimková - map the history of art brut in the Polish environment. Polish theoretician Grażyna Borowik contributes to the understanding of the activities of the centres associated with psychiatric care, Małgorzata Szaefer opens up the issue of the current status of art brut in Poland. Barbora Kundračíková writes about the authenticity of art in relation to art brut. The book designed by Petr Šmalec, with two hundred pictures in it, includes a comprehensive catalogue of medallions of the artists accompanied by examples of their works. As a bonus, there is a chronology highlighting important art brut events in Poland and around the world.

CURATORS: Šárka Belšíková, Anežka Šimková

OLOMOUC MUSEUM OF ART

MUZEUM UMĚNÍ OLOMOUC

státní příspěvková organizace

Denisova 47, 771 11, Olomouc

www.muo.cz

Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann @ ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum - Between Worlds

Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann 

Between Worlds 

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum 

Through 12 september 2021 

ELISABETH JERICHAU-BAUMAN

En såret dansk kriger, 1865

Statens Museum for Kunst

ELISABETH JERICHAU-BAUMAN

En egyptisk fellahkvinde med sit barn, 1872

Statens Museum for Kunst

The exhibition showcases about 100 paintings by the Danish-Polish artist ELISABETH JERICHAU-BAUMAN (1818–1881), representing a different and lesser-known side of the 19th-century Danish art scene.

- It has long been a desire of ours to set up an exhibition devoted to Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann at ARoS, and we are now proud to announce the most extensive presentation of her works to date. She was a unique voice in 19th-century Denmark and a forceful woman who, throughout her career, fought for her own personal emancipation – both as an artist and as an individual. Now we are giving her the place she deserves, says Erlend G. Høyersten, museum director, ARoS.

A NEW LOOK AT THE DANISH GOLDEN AGE

In the middle of the 19th century it was artists such as C.W. Eckersberg and a number of leading art historians who wrote the history of the Danish Golden Age. The period after the First Schleswig War was marked by strong national feeling, and the Danish art scene was dominated by subject matter dealing with the Danish people, the Danish landscape and the national past. This was the reality that Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann experienced when she came to Denmark in 1849. Because of her background at the art academy in Düsseldorf, she was mistaken for a German on her arrival, which in those years, from a pro-Danish point of view, was practically the worst kind of category to be placed in.

– Jerichau-Baumann is a cosmopolitan when compared to Danish artistic life in general. In Jerichau-Baumann's paintings we see drama and emotion, which runs contrary to the work of contemporary Danish Golden Age painters. The same is true of her use of colour. Jerichau-Baumann works within a range of brownish shades that are characteristic of the contemporary Central European trend, as opposed to the Danish use of colour, which is light and blond. She arrives in a Denmark strongly marked by nationalism, and here, because of her international style, she hits a brick wall, says Jakob Vengberg Sevel, curator, ARoS.

ELISABETH JERICHAU-BAUMAN

Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann was born in 1818 in Warsaw to a Polish mother and a German father. She trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf (1838 to 1844) after which she travelled to Rome where she met the Danish artist Jens Adolf Jerichau. They married and subsequently moved to Denmark, where they had nine children. In the period 1858 to 1871 Jerichau-Baumann travelled back and forth between Copenhagen and London where, for example, she did work for the British royal family. From 1869 to 1870 she made her first long voyage to the Orient (the Middle East and North Africa), and her travels became a way of discovering the world and promoting herself. Thanks to her foreign contacts and European perspective, Jerichau-Baumann was one of the very few Danish painters to portray the Orient and, as a woman, she was given exceptional access to harems which she could thus reproduce from her own observations. In addition, she was a very successful portrait painter of the aristocracy. Stylistically, she was oriented towards Europe and represented the European trends which, at the time, were thin on the ground in the Danish art world.

Curator-in-charge: Jakob Vengberg Sevel, curator, ARoS.

ARoS AARHUS KUNSTMUSEUM

Aros Allé 2, 8000 Aarhus C

www.aros.dk

Jan Matejko's Copernicus @ National Gallery, London - Conversations with God

Conversations with God: 

Jan Matejko’s Copernicus

National Gallery, London

25 March – 27 June 2021

JAN MATEJKO 

Copernicus. Conversations with God, 1873

Jagiellonian University, Kraków 

© Photo courtesy the owner

In spring 2021, an iconic painting of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, by the most famous Polish painter of the 19th century, Jan Matejko, will make a rare visit to the National Gallery, the first time it will ever have been seen in the UK. 

The 10-foot wide painting, which rarely leaves its home in the Senate Chamber of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, will be part of a new exhibition introducing visitors to the work of Jan Matejko (1838–1893). Despite being largely unknown outside his homeland, this highly original and distinctive artist is widely regarded as the national painter of Poland.     

Jan Matejko, (pronounced Ma – tay – coe), is revered by Poles for his huge, teeming, minutely detailed depictions of key moments in the nation's history. This particular work celebrates the achievements of Polish astronomer Copernicus (1473–1543), the first person since the ancient Greeks to realise that the sun rather than the earth is at the centre of our planetary system and that we revolve around it.

The monumental canvas was painted in 1873 to mark the 400th anniversary of the astronomer’s birth. Rather than depicting Copernicus at the moment of his discovery of heliocentrism – in the painting his chart of the heavens can already be seen there by his side – Jan Matejko chose to paint him on a rooftop in his hometown of Frombork discussing the matter with God. Unlike Galileo, some 73 years later, who reached similar conclusions but who alienated the Catholic Church, Copernicus was never excommunicated for challenging traditional belief; indeed, enlightened clerics of the day celebrated his breakthrough.   

This painting of a genius at work achieved almost instant fame when it was first exhibited in Kraków. It was circulated in thousands of reproductions and was subsequently acquired by subscription for the Jagiellonian University in 1873.

At the time Poland was still partitioned and debate raged about the nationality of Copernicus with both Germany and Poland claiming the astronomer as their own. This painting, showing him kneeling awestruck against a starry sky on the rooftop of the Tower at Frombork near the city’s cathedral where he served as canon, clearly positions Copernicus as Polish, thereby striking a chord with Polish people then in search of national figureheads and the work became both a symbol of Polish cultural identity and a vehicle for Polish nationalism.

The exhibition will include a copy of Copernicus’s 'De revolutionibus orbium coelestium', 'On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres', published in 1543 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London) which marked a turning point in human understanding of our place in the universe, together with astronomical instruments (The Jagiellonian University Museum, Kraków) and a self portrait and study for 'Copernicus, Conversations with God' (The National Museum in Kraków).

Christopher Riopelle, The Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, says: ‘Matejko saw his role not merely as recording great events from Polish history but at expressing their deep inner meaning for Poles. He stands at the end of the long tradition of history painting and, as the wider world is re-discovering, was one of its most ingenious and provocative exponents.’

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: ‘This is the second in a series of exhibitions supported by the Capricorn Foundation, in memory of Mr H J Hyams, and brings one of Poland’s most famous pictures to the National Gallery. Matejko’s Copernicus demonstrates the artist’s ambition to create defining images for a nation that yearned to recover its sovereignty and independence.’

THE NATIONAL GALLERY

Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN

www.nationalgallery.org.uk