Art stations fundation - by Grażyna Kulczyk

Installation art in today’s art world is an expression of transgressing the traditional categories of painting, graphics, sculpture, drawing or even musical composition - and at the same time, a fascination with space. Space in installations is not a passive context within which a picture is hung, or a sculpture placed – it forms an integral part of the artistic work.

It is an expression of artistic freedom, because it goes beyond the stiff boundaries of the traditionally understood painting or sculpture, generating a dynamic response to a space. Its roots lie in the 1960s, in environmental art – the art of space, and even earlier, in the works of the Dadaists, Surrealists, Cubists, and later on in Pop-art or conceptual art.

It is, at the same time, a highly ephemeral thing. In its clearest expression, it is created for the space and in the space for which it is created and in which it is intended to be seen, and then, immediately after the exhibition closes, taken down and, most commonly, destroyed.

INSTALLATIONS (TV film, duration: 20 min)

Many of those installations which were created in the ‘90s are shown in the TV film Installations, made by Joanna Janiak in 1995 for Telewizj Edukacyjna PR1  TVP [the educational arm of the Polish national broadcaster TVP]. They aroused controversy back then, through subverting academic rules. The works shown in the film no longer exist. The installations by Leszek Knaflewski, Jan Berdyszak, Leon Tarasewicz, Piotr Kurka, Izabella Gustowska, Piotr C. Kowalski, Zbigniew Libera, Mariusz Kruk and many more, were filmed over several years. In the films, the artists themselves discuss installation art, including contributions from Jan Berdyszak, Marek Kijewski, Barbara Kowalczyk, Agata Michowska, Joanna Przybyła.   

MEETING AND CREATING (TV Film, duration: 20 min)

A film report from the German-Polish art symposium Meeting and Creating, which took place in May 1992 inaugurating an exhibition under the same name in the International Art Centre on ul. Jackowski in Poznań, instigated by Michael Kurzwelly and Jola Banowska. The film shows numerous installations created around the city. Artists like Urlike Schroeter,  Edward Łazikowski, Rainer Fest and  Ryszard Waśko – president of the Construction in Process Foundation, discuss the works. From the series  Budować, Mieszkać, Myśleć [Build, Live, Think] miniatures from the workshops of Piotr C. Kowalski – painter and Wiesław Napierała – sculptor. 

Joanna Janiak – From 1990-2005, a TV journalist specialising in modern art, she nowadays works as a multimedia artist working around the broadly understood concept of the image. Since 2004 she has been collaborating with Piotr C. Kowalski.