#Visual Spa
Art Dissolved in the Contemporary
pop-up exhibition
3th –5th September 2016, Blue Skyscraper, Warsaw (Poland)
Official Coorganiser: Jewish Community in Warsaw, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation
Honorary Patronage: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, German Embassy in Warsaw
This event was made possible through the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation’s Grassroots Initiative program.
artists: MAGDA BUCZEK / TUSIA DĄBROWSKA / KORNELIA DZIKOWSKA / JAKUB GLIŃSKI / RUA GOLBA / GOSIA GOLIŃSKA / LAURA GRUDNIEWSKA / IWO RACHWAŁ / ANTONINA GUGAŁA / ANNA KOSAREWSKA / MARIA KOZŁOWSKA / MAREK KUCHARSKI / LAST CUTIE / KASPER LECNIM / MAŁGOSIA MALINOWSKA / MASSIF ZINES (MONIKA PRONIEWSKA i MARTA SZEWCZYK) / DAWID MARSZEWSKI / EDEN MITSENMACHER / MUZEALNE BIURO WYCIECZKOWE / ANTONINA NOWACKA / IZA SMELCZYŃSKA / PAULINA PENC / BOGUMIŁA PIOTROWSKA / KRYSTYNA PIOTROWSKA / ANNA PŁONKA / POLEN PERFORMANCE / WIKTOR PODGÓRSKI / PRINC POLO / KRZYSZTOF SOKÓŁ / GRZEGORZ STEFAŃSKI / ANNA SZTWIERTNIA / WIDT / BOŻENA WYDROWSKA / MAŁGORZATA ŻURADA
timetable:
Saturday 3.09
8pm-0am: Maria Kozłowska, HYPNOTIC SESSION
10pm Grzegorz Stefański, INTERWENTION
11p,: Antonina Nowacka i Bożena Wydrowska, KLIPOT (audiovisual performance)
Sunday 4.09
2pm: GUIDED TOUR with Muzealne Biuro Wycieczkowe
8pm-0am: Light Spa session with Łukasz Gregorek
8pm-0am: Rua Golba, TUNING / HEALING CODES FOR THE BIOLOGICAL APOCALYPSE
Monday 5.09
8pm-0am: Maria Kozłowska, seans hipnotyczny
8pm-0am: Polen Performance LIVE
8pm-0am: Anna Płonka, LET US REJOICE (performance)
The “VISUAL SPA: Art Dissolved in the Contemporary” will be a three-day long event in the form of a “pop-up exhibition” of Jewish and Jewish-inspired modern art. The main goal of the exhibition is to create an environment facilitating an immersion in the visual present.
The event will take place in one of the office spaces on the 19th floor of the “Błękitny Wieżowiec” (“Blue Skyscraper”) in the center of Warsaw. The building stands on the site of pre-war Great Synagogue of Warsaw blown up by SS on May 16, 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In the 90’s two flours of the Skyscraper – a Warsaw symbol of capitalist transformation – were given to the Jewish Community of Warsaw as a part of the so-called “restitution”.
Referring to the history of the place the voice will be given mainly, but not exclusively, to Jewish artists. The opening of the exhibition intentionally coincides with the begging of the month of Elul – the time of purification in preparation for a new opening. The question of change and new beginnings is inscribed in the place of exhibition – a building symbolizing the transformation of Warsaw and the new life of Jewish community in this city. The ruins of The Great Synagogue have been cleared, in their place the office block was built. We don’t want to set up another museum of melancholy. We want to show the contemporary art, created here and now in reaction to the visible present. In the “Blue Skyscraper” we want to create an experimental space in which it will be possible to show that the process of reinventing – so defining for Jewish community in capitalist Poland – is happening also in the Jewish modern and alternative art.
The experimental form of the gallery is indented to function as medium supporting the artistic activity. The key assumption is to enable the recipient a one-to-one contact with the work of art in an intimate environment. This kind of immersion, occurring at the purifying time of the month of Elul, will enable a passage from the past to the present.
THE SPA
Spa is a place where one can take medicinal baths. In VISUAL SPA a bath has a symbolic meaning corresponding to ritual immersion in Judaism – it consists in a purifying and opening immersion in a predesigned, meaningful “experienced environment”. In Spa resorts, “the treatments” –a purifying bath, a massage or an aromatherapy – do not function as medical cures that would heal and remove old injures, wounds or conditions. The Spa treatments are rather soothing, unusual but pre-programmed rituals designed to reinvigorate the recipient; enable him or her to experience anew.
Each of the rooms of the office space on the 19th floor of the Blue Skyscraper will be handed over to a different artist to create a different therapeutic ritual. In each of the rooms a different sensual experience will be offered to the visitors.
VISUAL SPA will operate for three evenings. The opening of the exhibition will not be a classical vernissage. The audience will be invited for a recreational evening, during which they will take a series of treatments, each one booked in advance, 7PM to 11PM.
What we intend to do is to create a comfortable set and setting for a group of people up to 40 person per hour, providing them with the unique possibility of having a 1-to-1 contact with the artists concept.
THE GOAL
Immersion in the VISUAL SPA is a reinvigorating treatment. This will happen due to site-specific situations created by the artists taking part in the project. By works such as video, sound, fragrance, performance and other media, we want to create an environment that will facilitate the feeling of contemplative dissolution in the visual preset.
THE ORGANISERS
Matosek/Niezgoda Studio (Paulina Tyro-Niezgoda and Piotr Matosek) is a duet of exhibition designers who has worked with prestigious art institutions in Poland. More importantly, in their own works they’ve also experimented with using the space-time of the gallery as a medium supporting the exhibited art message.
Visual Spa concept is a continuation of the #POLIGON, a gallery operating in 2015, in which took place a series of 10 pop-up exhibitions
