Zachฤta โ National Gallery of Art. The exhibition Sculpture in Search of a Place is yet another one in a series of cross-sectional thematic exhibitions at the Zachฤta, devoted each year to a different artistic medium previously painting and scenography.
It tackles the subject of the identity of Polish sculpture over the last sixty years โ not so much as a chronology of artistic activity, but as a presentation of the phenomena and creative attitudes that have been essential for its development. It is also the result of the deep fascination and many years of research of its curator, Anna Maria Leลniewska, who has managed to collect the works of nearly a hundred visual artists, including a dozen or so film makers, and present them in the form of an original visual essay.
It is not without a reason that the exhibition features the famous Pregnant Women by Xawery Dunikowski, a classic and precursor of modernist sculpture in Poland, who had a huge impact on the next generations of artists. His works provide a kind of starting point for the exhibition, if one tries to look at the subject of sculpture and the changes it has undergone over the years from historical perspective.
Next to them, visitors can see, among others, polyester forms by Alina Szapocznikow and figurative private nudes by Katarzyna Kozyra. Also present here are works of folk art and African masks which, through their primal power of expression, have been shown by the curator as constitutive for the phenomenon of sculpture.
Another key to the exhibition is offered by the theory of the four elements, inextricably linked with the concept of spirituality.
