Grounding Vision: Waclaw Szpakowski - Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York

Published by: OKiS | 14-Jan-2017
This exhibition is a continuation of implemented in recent years by the Center of Art and Culture in Wroclaw - Cultural Institution of the Government of Lower Silesia efforts to consolidate permanent, extremely important place Waclaw Szpakowski in the history of contemporary art and widening the reception of his work, which situates itself at the crossroads of art and science and the visual arts and music.. The most important of them are primarily released in 2015 monographic book Waclaw Szpakowski 1883-1973. Rhythmical lines, edited by Mrs. Elzbieta Lubowicz and last year's exhibition of the same title, which was organized in the framework of the visual arts program of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 at the Municipal Museum of Wroclaw. Evidence of the effectiveness of these activities is New York exhibition of the Artist, which is also a first, so extensive an individual presentation of the Szpakowski"s work in the US, as well as prepared by the Center of Art and Culture in Wroclaw further views of exhibition that will take place among Krakow, Budapest, Riga and Bydgoszcz.
Venue: Miguel Abreu Gallery
Address: 88 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002
Date: 18-Jan-17
Time: Opening: January 18, 2017; 6 p.m. Exhibition: January 18 "” February 19, 2017
Web: http://www.okis.pl/site/home/2443/1.html
This exhibition is a continuation of implemented in recent years by the Center of Art and Culture in Wroclaw - Cultural Institution of the Government of Lower Silesia efforts to consolidate permanent, extremely important place Waclaw Szpakowski in the history of contemporary art and widening the reception of his work, which situates itself at the crossroads of art and science and the visual arts and music.. The most important of them are primarily released in 2015 monographic book Waclaw Szpakowski 1883-1973. Rhythmical lines, edited by Mrs. Elzbieta Lubowicz and last year's exhibition of the same title, which was organized in the framework of the visual arts program of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 at the Municipal Museum of Wroclaw. Evidence of the effectiveness of these activities is New York exhibition of the Artist, which is also a first, so extensive an individual presentation of the Szpakowski"s work in the US, as well as prepared by the Center of Art and Culture in Wroclaw further views of exhibition that will take place among Krakow, Budapest, Riga and Bydgoszcz.

WacÅ‚aw Szpakowski (1883-1973) was a Polish architect and engineer who created a distinct idiom of abstract drawing, first conceived in notebook sketches in the 1900s and developed systematically in a series of works made with an ink pen on tracing paper between the early 1920s and 1940s. Szpakowski worked in complete isolation, indifferent to the art of his time; yet his project is fundamentally modernist in its aspiration to find the simplest possible means for expressing the underlying order of the universe, one that approaches a scientific investigation in its formal rigor and systematic nature. Calling his works "drawings of linear ideas," Szpakowski created symmetrical patterns of a continuous geometric line; invariably 1 mm thick and 4 mm apart, it always starts on the left side of the page and ends on the right. For Szpakowski, the line"s relentless trajectory across the surface of each sheet is merely a fragment of its endless rhythmical movement through space and time. He invited viewers to "decipher" what he called "the inner content" of his drawings by following the course of the "broken line" across the surface of the page, "just like one composes the words of a text out of individual letters."[1] For Szpakowski, the utter simplicity of his creative means and the viewer"s ability to decipher the meaning of his drawings by retracing the process of their making, constituted two essential characteristics that set his works apart from decorative patterns. Szpakowski called for a mode of sustained looking, through which the viewer"s perceptual apparatus would become tuned into the "cyclical rhythms of phenomena." Seen today, Szpakowski"s work anticipates seriality, accelerated temporalities and new density of visual memory. Resembling circuitries or digitally generated diagrams, the motifs of Szpakowski"s drawings evoke the new technologies of image production that affect perception, heightening the crisis of attention. Exploring the dichotomy of a sustained and distracted, decentered gaze, Szpakowski"s project can be understood as a critique of the changing modalities of vision.

This exhibition is the first extensive presentation of Szpakowski"s work in the United States. It brings together 26 drawings, made between 1923 and 1943, and his early sketchbooks, alongside works by Guy de Cointet, Hanne Darboven, Trisha Donnelly, Sam Lewitt, Hilary Lloyd, Florian Pumhösl, and R. H. Quaytman, all of which resonate in important ways with Szpakowski"s project.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous loans of the Szpakowski family, the Museum Sztuki in Lodz, and Mr Lozowski and the support of the Center of Art and Culture in Wroclaw - Cultural Institution of the Government of Lower Silesia which is responsible for the organization of the exhibition from the Polish side.

[1] WacÅ‚aw Szpakowski, "Rythmical Lines" [1968] in Waclaw Szpakowski: the Infinity of the Line. (Warsaw: Muzeum Narodowe, 1992), pp.181, 18

Wacław Szpakowski

Born in Warsaw in 1883; died in WrocÅ‚aw in 1973 where he lived since 1945. The author of graphic "rhythmical lines" created in 1900-1951 and a forerunner of geometric abstraction in art. The first exhibition of his works took place in the Museum of Art in Łódź in 1978, already after the artist"s death.

His first monographic exhibition was held in 1992 in Brussels (Atelier 340). Szpakowski"s works were presented at numerous exhibitions of Polish art organized abroad (Presences Polonaises, Centrum Pompidou, Paris 1983; Europa, Europa, Bonn 1994).

Recently they were shown at the exhibition Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2012/2013) summarizing the pioneering years of abstract art in the world.

Grounding Vision: Waclaw Szpakowski

With works by Guy de Cointet, Hanne Darboven, Trisha Donnelly, Sam Lewitt, Hilary Lloyd, Florian Pumhösl, and R. H. Quaytman
Curated by Masha Chlenova and Anya Komar
Curatorial cooperation: Lukasz Kujawski
Opening: January 18, 2017; 6 p.m.
January 18 "” February 19, 2017
88 Eldridge Street
New York, NY 10002
www.okis.pl
www.miguelabreugallery.com

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