Archiwalna

THEFT AND DESTRUCTION

The Theft and Destruction exhibition intends to analyse the status of a work of art: its force, aura, asset power, transformation, and destruction. Sophisticated thieves, ingenious copyists, mysterious millionaires purchasing masterpieces on the black market have all been heroes of tabloid scandals, and of Hollywood films and myths feeding off the symbolic and economic aura of artworks.

21.02.2020 – 09.04.2020

Galeria Arsenał, ul. A. Mickiewicza 2

Works displayed at the exhibition showcase the transformation behind the concept of artwork theft itself. More can be stolen than a material item as such: ideas, concepts, actions, and symbolic meanings can all fall victim to theft – also in a potential act of emancipation, as images wield power.

The power of image may also be destroyed in acts of vandalism, terrorism, or madness, or by the element of psychotic force. Works have their own energy – political, sacral, iconoclastic, liberating – each attack or destruction an effort to deprive them of it. The destruction of an object is absorbed by the market, misplaced and attempting to find itself in an incessant transformation of the status of a work of art: potentially an ephemeral activity, an act of wounding the body, of taking over an archive, of seeking justice, of struggle.

Michał Łukaszuk

English translation from the Polish language by Aleksandra Sobczak-Kövesi

In 2013, fire consumed art studios in the Warsaw’s Praga district. The scale of destruction was brutal, the element completely obliterating Karol Radziszewski’s studio. In 2017, Czułość gallery in the Old Town in Warsaw caught fire. Flames blazing from the electric installation rose to the ceiling. Covered in soot, Janek Zamoyski’s works had to be evacuated along with the gallery; years later, they found a substitute home: the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok. Another venue fell victim to fire in 2019, Rafał Bujnowski’s studio this time round. The inferno broke out at night, gaining such force over a mere several minutes that it took the fire brigade to put it out. While some works could be salvaged, others were scarred. (Footnote: fire consumed Mirosław Bałka’s studio in 1993 as well.)

Marek Kijewski brutally assailed Mariola Przyjemska’s works in 1991, stabbing them with a kitchen knife. Julita Wójcik’s Rainbow burned a total of seven times under recurrent attacks. In 2012, Włodzimierz Umaniec, also known as Vladimir Umanets, defaced Mark Rothko’s painting in London, signing it with his own name in ink, and adding a radical yellowism manifesto line. Removing it would remain art conservators’ nightmare over the next 20 months. In the year 2000, Daniel Olbrychski acted out in the spotlight of TV cameras at Piotr Uklański’s exhibition The Nazis held at Warsaw’s Zachęta Gallery, taking a slash with a sabre preserved from the film set of The Deluge. His victim? The image of Karl Kremer, the character portrayed by the actor in Claude Lelouch’s Les Uns et les Autres (1981). That same year, at the same place, deputy Witold Tomczak destroyed Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture La nona ora, removing a meteorite weighing down the effigy of Pope John Paul II. Four years later, at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok

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Curator: Michał Łukaszuk
Cooperation from the gallery: Ewa Chacianowska
Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Rafał Bujnowski, Wanda Czełkowska, Dom Mody Limanka, Edward Dwurnik (z kolekcji MOCAK), Olga Dziubak, Jakub Gliński, Tomasz Machciński, Petr Pavlensky, Julia Poziomecka, Mariola Przyjemska, Karol Radziszewski, Daniel Rycharski, Dominika Święcicka, Julita Wójcik, Janek Zamoyski with selection of works from Collection II of the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok: Mirosław Bałka, Oskar Dawicki, Maciej Kurak, Robert Kuśmirowski, Zbigniew Libera, Piotr Łakomy, Anna Molska, Odili Donald Odita, Ewa Partum, Aleksandra Polisiewicz, Rewizja, Jacek Sempoliński, Janek Simon, Marek Sobczyk.

Event

Guided tour in English of the “THEFT AND DESTRUCTION” exhibition

28.03.2020 – 28.03.2020

Arsenal Gallery, ul. A. Mickiewicza 2, Białystok

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Opening times:
Thuesday – Sunday
10:00-18:00

Last admission
to exhibition is at:
17.30

PLAN YOUR VISIT

THEFT AND DESTRUCTION

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Guided tour in English of the “THEFT AND DESTRUCTION” exhibition

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