LINE: Drawing in Contemporary Art

Group exhibition: 27 March – 30 April 2009

Artists: Kyung Roh Bannwart (Korea Południowa), Valentina Grubačević (Chorwacja), Annie Heckman (USA), Lee Hunter (USA), Thomas Klimowski (Francja), LEMEH42 (Włochy), Mieke Maaike Fokkinga (Holandia), Łukasz Panko (Polska), Hiba Schahbaz Lotia (Indie), Sarah Schastok (Niemcy), Fabiana Shizue (Brazylia), Olja Stipanović (Chorwacja), Maja Vidović (Chorwacja), Brian Widmaier (USA) Curator: Urszula Humienik-Dworakowska

FAUNA

exhibition from 24 October to 30 November 2008

Artists: Group artIchoke: Katja Pál + Eva Vasari (Slovenia), Sophie Dvořák (Austria), Patrick Millard (USA), Kyung Roh Bannwart (South Korea), Fabiana Shizue (Brazil), Pedro Torres (Brazil) Curator: Urszula Humienik-Dworakowska

BODY LANGUAGE

exhibition from 8 June to 12 July 2008

Paul Amlehn (New Zealand), Ismaïl Bahri (Tunesia), Laure Cale (France), Anne Vanier-Drüssel (France), Yoko Fukushima (Japan), Valentina Grubačević (Croatia), Olga Karpinsky (France), Łukasz Panko (Poland), Natalia Saurin (Italy), Venessa Vobis (USA)

CURATOR STATEMENT

“A human being is an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.”

Christopher Morley

We’ve all heard of body language from many advice books and magazine articles. Our body subconsciously communicates with others through our gestures, posture, stride, etc. This exhibition is definitely not about this sort of body language. What many of us, except maybe doctors, do not think about is that our body has its own modes of communication with itself. Nerve cells in our skin communicate with our brain to tell it that the surface we are touching is cold, for example. This is a literal “communication,” but there are many operations occurring at all times in our body that we aren’t aware of.

The artwork in this exhibition functions on many planes. It is a presentation of anatomy on the surface, as well as about the functions of the body and about its memories and traumas, etc. The work brings to mind many questions for the viewer to ponder:

How do we see our body?

What are the body’s possibilities?

How do we communicate with our body?

How do we perceive illness?

How do we cope with disease?

What memories are encoded in our interiors?

Looking at disengaged internal organs, is it possible to have such a distance to oneself?

In the end, what relationship do we have with our body, with ourselves?

These are genuinely thought-provoking questions (not only) viewers should reflect upon.

The art of “Body Language” exists within a larger art context, and deals with the issue of the connections of medicine and art. These two seemingly disparate concepts are often joined together in art. What is the significance of medicine in art? What is the significance of art in medicine? The reality is that both have been linked for centuries. Medicine at times was more art than science. Art provides healing and new ways of looking at ourselves. Art therapy has been found to provide healing sometimes more profound than conventional medicine.

I encourage everyone to look at “Body Language” from a different perspective. You may find something unexpected.

Urszula Humienik – curator