A 21st Century Portrait     

27th October – 29th November 2009

A screening of the video-installation/film by two visual artists, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, composed of shots of a football match. The main hero of the match and the video-installation is Zinadine Zidane. For 90 minutes the viewer follows him on the field during the game. The match was recorded with 17 cameras, each of them showing the field from a different perspective, but for each the most important is Zidane. This work raises questions about the theme of the role of idols and heroes in contemporary culture.

The video-installation will be accompanied by the works of Polish and international artists that make ironic reference to the cult of stars and idols as a model to be followed by socially weaker groups or ethnic minorities in ‘richer countries’ on the path to attaining success in life.

TO PEE IN A BUN. Works from the Collection of Zachęta National Gallery of Art

5th September – 22nd November 2009

TO PEE IN A BUN is the fifth presentation of a selection of works from the Zachęta collections. At the exhibition can be seen works either rarely or never before seen. The exhibition’s curator Karol Radziszewski – has made a subjective selection and reinterpretation of works, placing them in new and at times surprising contexts.

Maciek Stępiński. Warsaw City Tennis Clubs

23rd  October – 6th December 2009

Kordegarda Gallery

In his most recent project, prepared specially for the Kordegarda as part of the Room with a View series, Maciek Stępiński portrays selected fragments of Warsaw’s urban landscape. This time, Stępiński talks about places close to his heart: tennis clubs, in which he played or competed as a boy. The exhibition’s title, borrowed from a name of real tennis club, evokes the period of late communism, when tennis was an elite sport, a symbol of a better, ‘Western’ lifestyle and Warsaw’s tennis clubs stood out from the dull greyness of almost everything else.

Krzysztof Wodiczko. Guests

53rd INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION IN VENICE              

Exhibition in Polish Pavilion

7th June – 22nd November 2009

www.labiennale.art.pl

The projection, created specially for the Biennial, transforms the space of the Polish Pavilion into a place where the viewers watch scenes taking place seemingly outside, behind an illusion of windows, their projection on the pavilion’s windowless walls. The individual projections, the images of windows projected onto the pavilion’s architecture, open its interior to virtual, but at the same time real, scenes showing immigrants washing windows, taking a rest, talking, waiting for work, exchanging remarks about their tough existential situation, unemployment, problems getting their stay legalised.