Stranger than Paradise — Artistic Interventions and Deconstructions of a ‘City’ in a world of global stories
Artists
Kuba Bąkowski, Nicolas Grospierre, Grzegorz Hańderek, Jolanta Jastrząb, Lesław Tetla, Andrzej Tobis, Wojciech Wilczyk, Grzegorz Wróblewski
We kindly invite you to the opening of the exhibition 15th September, 2017 at 6 pm.
The exhibition will last till 15th October 2017.
The exhibition is intended to show the difference in the functioning of small and large rratives in the domain of an urban organism. Nowadays, in the realities of “information overload”, the modern city becomes an arena for oppressive or universalizing influence of the discourse of power, which often ignores the partial or individual needs and expectations of minority groups, and tends to occupy large spaces and stabilize meanings. Conversely, the narratives of minority groups are usually articulated by interventions in places or even in specific points, and their purpose is a transformation and /or polysemy of meaning. This provides a compelling backdrop for artists deconstructing both anthropological sites (e.g. heterotopes) and non-places (devoid of constant identity). Unlike the majority of spokesmen who represent majorities, exercise rhythm, continuity, and cite creation myths, artists more often refer to arrhythmia, retrospection and anticipation. In an artistic discourse, symptomatic figures are often exemplified by public buildings, as well as renounced of or familiar places. All the depictions of places and specific points are architectural, aesthetic and functional expressions of identity ethnos and social mythos. However, for minority groups and artists, this perspective may be far from the expectations of residents and newcomers, as shown in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise. This is one of the reasons why artists treat the global village as a potential stage.
Curator: Roman Lewandowski
