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Mala Gallery
8, Zamkowy Sq., Warsaw (Old Town)
30 November - 21 December 2004

 

 

£ód¼ Kaliska: New Pop - Hiperart


Warszawa, Mala Gallery , preparations for £ód¼ Kaliska exhibition "New Pop - Hiperart". Photo Andrzej ¦wietlik.

THIS YEAR £ód¼ Kaliska celebrates its 25th anniversary. Events marking the anniversary will occur throughout the year. These will include numerous actions, exhibitions, public meetings and film screenings. As was the case five years ago, the program of celebrations this time includes events at the Liget Gallery in Budapest and the Little Gallery of the UPAP-CCA in Warsaw, with which £ód¼ Kaliska has been collaborating since it was created. In September of this year, exhibitions and performances were held at the Liget Gallery in Budapest and at Tirgu Mures Castle in Romania. This installation at the Little Gallery (from December 1) will draw directly on those Hungarian and Romanian events. Emphasis will be given to presenting issues related to New Pop - a phenomenon that emerged in today’s mass culture and has recently been dynamically and aggressively taking over ever broader realms of life.

£ód¼ Kaliska's members include Marek Janiak, Andrzej Kwietniewski, Adam Rzepecki, Cezary Makary Wielogórski and Andrzej ¦wietlik.


Mala Gallery, Warsaw, £ód¼ Kaliska's "New Pop - Hiperart". Photo K. Wojciechowski

 

New Pop-Art

IT IS in the recent years the main subject of interest of the £ód¼ Kaliska group, which changed orientation of its provocative and unconventional approach to art through its interest in mass culture. It is necessary to say that through 25 years of the group's activity its works were often close to the limits of so called high art. Their manifestations, performances, happenings of all kinds were carried out not only in renowned galleries or museums but also in less official places like community clubs and art centers or student clubs.

In 1990's they presented their films that were aimed also at wider audience. These films were even aired by public TV, although not in prime time.

Recently £ód¼ Kaliska went out to the streets, also literally, changing by programmed events of mass character the Piotrkowska street into an open laboratory of alternative activities, directly influencing inhabitants of the city - including the pub "£ód¼ Kaliska", which became "a kind of museum/shrine" of the group.


Ma³a Gallery, Warsaw, 30 November 2004 - opening of £ód¼ Kaliska's "New Pop - Hiperart". Photo K. Wojciechowski

Ma³a Gallery, Warsaw, 30 November 2004 - opening of £ód¼ Kaliska's "New Pop - Hiperart". Photo K. Wojciechowski

During all these years £ód¼ Kaliska used to release manifestos expressing current attitude to art and reality of individual members of the group or the group as a whole. In addition to these manifestos they were continuously using photography understood as visualization of their deliberations. Sometimes these pictures were artificially staged and other times they had character of documentary recording of successive organized actions or situations.


Ma³a Gallery, Warsaw, 30 November 2004 - opening of £ód¼ Kaliska's "New Pop - Hiperart". Photo Anna B. Bohdziewicz

New Pop - Hiperart comments upon stronger and stronger attitudes of consumerism evident in the society and upon more and more persistent, far from being gentle attempts to force upon the society some behavioral patterns by mass culture. £ód¼ Kaliska took up a dialogue with mass culture by melting its activities into a stream of commercial events and trying to blow this world up from within by showing its emptiness and showiness. Now everything on their pictures is nice, sweet, imbued with soft-sex and winning beholder with pettiness of commercial tricks. Proceeding to the paradise proposed by the media world "irritates them because societies proceed to this aim in so laborious way" as Jolanta Ciesielska wrote in the anniversary album. So they are "trying to preserve and clone this commercial paradise in any possible number"*

The attitude of programmed conformism in this matter seems to be another perverse warning given by £ód¼ Kaliska in relation to the commercialized world.

This world means seducing and smartly prepared ads that are more and more often introducing to its repertoire some elements taken from art and culture. Also from this highest culture. They can not be resisted. That is why now the art may freely draw from the world of commercial ads.

Just in the way £ód¼ Kaliska is doing successfully.

M.G.

 

*/ Jolanta Ciesielska, „Popi kultury”, £ódæ Kaliska Muzeum - Nr 1 (01) New Pop, Listopad 2004., Wydawca: Stowarzyszenie Artystyczne £ód¼ Kaliska. ISBN 83-921664-0-X

 


29 November 2004 - £ód¼ Kaliska performs live at the CCA: ceremonial arrival of the works of £ód¼ Kaliska in the galleries of the CCS's international collection of contemporary art. Photo M. Grygiel.

 

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