29 July 2021
“*** TO FREEDOM. Polish art of the 80s and 90s of the 20th century from the collection of Werner Jerke from Recklinghausen”.
Opening: July 29, 2021 Exhibition: 30 July — 3 October 2021 Curator: Bogusław Deptuła A fragment of one of the best collections of Polish art of the 20th and 21st century, from the collection of Werner Jerke, will be presented at the State Art Gallery in Sopot. Some of the works shown have a downright legendary character, they are known and reproduced, but hardly anyone realizes who owns them. Jerke collects with knowledge and a sense of the specificity of Polish art. He keeps his hand on her pulse and knows exactly where he beats. He chooses accurately and sensitively. By profession, Werner Jerke is a doctor-ophthalmologist, owner of an eye clinic and winemaker. However, he is best known as a collector of Polish art and creator of the first private museum of Polish art abroad. The museum is located in Germany's Recklinghausen (Ruhr Basin) in a building designed by a collector himself. Born in Gliwice to a German family, Jerke left Poland at the age of 23. He began by collecting the art of Young Poland and the École de Paris. Currently, his collection has several hundred items. It focuses on the Polish avant-garde of interwar and postwar modernity. The exhibition at the PGS in Sopot will present mainly paintings from the 80s and 90s of the 20th century. Works by members of the Warsaw Group — Ryszard Grzyb, Paweł Kowalewski, Jarosław Modzelewski, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Marek Sobczyk, Roman Woźniak; Wrocław Luxury, Ładnie Group, or classics such as Edward Dwurnik or Leon Tarasewicz and artists of the younger generation, such as Radek Szlaga. The presentation, numbering more than 60 objects, is a selection of works with a political or social commitment. It presents a slightly lesser-known side of Werner Jerke's collecting interests. The exhibition will also show one of the most famous paintings by Paweł Kowalewski — “I shot by the Indians”. The canvas was created in 1983 during the martial law and is an ironic self-portrait of the creator.
24 June 2021
As the only artist from Poland, Paweł Kowalewski was invited by the Pope of the Italian art scene and internationally renowned curator — Achille Bonito Oliva — to participate in the collective exhibition “A.B.O. THEATRON. L'Arte o la Vita/Art or Life” in the company of such stars as Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol. Opening of the exhibition today, 24 June 2021, at Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea — Museum of Modern Art in Turin.
Exhibition: 28.05. — 31.07.2021
Paweł Kowalewski, an icon of Polish art of the 1980s and founder of the legendary Gruppa, returns with an individual exhibition of the latest painting works, which he calls “OBJECTS”. On May 28, in the Kielce Gallery of Contemporary Art WINDA, 32 canvases will be exhibited for the first time, which are inspired by the texts of the thinker Hannah Arendt, the artist's travels to Africa, and The Disposition of Modern Man. Kowalewski believes that we live in a world where reason has simply gone bankrupt.
The acclaimed art critic, Anda Rottenberg, writes in her text for the exhibition: “He painted “ugly”, like the whole Gruppa and, like Andrzej Wróblewski, a few decades earlier, who decided that final things could not be painted nicely. (...) Nice painting is easier. And, of course, better assimilated by the audience. But is it necessary for an artist who wants to annoy the viewer? The most recent exhibition of Paweł Kowalewski's paintings has a distinctive poetic title for the artist “Objects designed to stimulate the life of the mind, i.e. the invisible eye of the soul”. His art has always had to scream. At the heart of Kowalewski's painting is opposition and disagreement with the surrounding reality, and these objects were created as a precaution — they are meant to arouse anxiety in us, prompting us to reflect. Paweł Kowalewski's latest paintings are a natural continuation of his thinking about art, they are nonchalant, expressive, have a poster character and contain simple observations on serious topics that the artist captures in symbolic color. Their hidden meanings reveal the titles: “Fides against Intellectus” — a brain pierced by an arrow, on a bright pink background, or a painterly story about the fact that reason has gone bankrupt, “British tears”, in which bloody Africa is imprinted, reflections on color, neocolonialism and totalitarian systems, and “Happiness”, which is naive. an ironic cloud on a blue background. Paweł Kowalewski closed the works in three cycles: “Hannah Arendt”, “African Dreams” and “Solitude”. “This kind of divergence between the appearance and the meaning of the painting and the bitter irony that emerges from this divergence is an echo of youth, and thus grows into a constitutive feature of Kowalewski's work. And it can be rooted in his youthful experience of growing up in the poverty of the PRL and solidifying in the oppression of martial law,” Rottenberg explains in his text. Art is liberating. Art purifies and probably that's why Kowalewski never stopped painting. His cassandric nature constantly sees signs and symbols around him, which the creator takes out of context and then places in the paintings. He feverishly framed his canvases in decorated frames in order to emphasize, knock out of reality what he observed. His poetic, written images become living OBJECTS, with their own body and soul. They are independent, they follow their strangeness and scream... As Paweł Kowalewski says: “Real art must be rebellious!” The exhibition “Objects designed to stimulate the life of the mind, or the invisible eye of the soul” will open on May 28, Friday at 6:30pm at the WINDA Contemporary Art Gallery in Kielce. The gallery, which was established in 2004, exhibited works by, among others, Wojciech Fangor, Stanisław Fijałkowski, Jerzy Nowosielski and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Event on FB www.galeriawinda.pl Patron of the exhibition: Group One