24.09.2024 - 17.11.2024, 12:00 - 19:00
11.10.2024, 12:00 - 19:00
Opening: September 23, 18:00.
Exhibition: September 24 – November 17, 2024
The gallery will be open from Tuesday to Sunday 12:00 – 19:00.
☀️ The exhibition is dedicated to the work of Hanna Orzechowska (1923–2008). It focuses on the central motif of her artistic practice – the gaze into the sun, considering it as a figure of boundary experience. The sun in the artist's work transforms from a warming red sphere for the body and senses, through a blinding brightness that deprives the subject of all perceptual barriers, to a cold star heralding catastrophe.
🌤️ Seeing the sun with closed eyes, tracking afterimages under the eyelids, but also 'seeing with the body,' introspection, creating images of feminine subjectivity, dreaming, define part of the exhibition in the lower space of Galeria Studio. Here are never-before-exhibited afterimage compositions by Orzechowska from August 1948, her self-portraits from the 1940s and 1970s, and drawn representations of the female body (circa 1978–1979) rooted in experiences of pain and pleasure. Orzechowska, who co-created the artistic circle of Władysław Strzemiński in the second half of the 1940s, not only absorbed influences but also actively influenced and inspired the author of the Theory of Seeing. Alongside the artist's afterimage paintings, we point to her textual and visual notes from Strzemiński's lectures (second half of the 1940s) at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódź. We also present – for the first time available to viewers – small-sized drawings that illustrate the transformations of 20th-century art, which surely served the author of the Theory of Seeing to illustrate his lectures.
🌤️ The upper space of the gallery is dedicated to the issue of seeing with open eyes: in daylight, but also in the blinding light of the exploding sun, in the black glow of events and liminal experiences. The sun in this part of the exhibition, in Orzechowska's works, takes on a gray or black color, becoming a 'dark lamp.' Collages such as By never again and 'don't shoot at...' can be considered as a statement about the cruelties of war and a reference to the Holocaust, as well as a dissent against the violence that was occurring: the anti-Semitic and anti-intellectual campaign in 1968. Symbolically concluding the exhibition, a collage depicts a black sun – resembling a gigantic eye staring at the advancing catastrophe of the world, while simultaneously experiencing the disintegration and death of subjectivity.
🌥️ The exhibition is equipped with a documentary annex containing materials from the archive of the artist's daughter, Agata Siecińska, concerning the period of Hanna Orzechowska's studies, professional work, and family life. The vast majority of works and archival materials are being exhibited for the first time.
We sincerely thank Agata Siecińska for her kindness, cooperation, and for providing the works and documentation of Hanna Orzechowska.
Curator: Luiza Nader
Exhibition scenography: Paulina Tyro-Niezgoda
Exhibition partner: Arton Foundation
Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund – a state special-purpose fund.