The Foksal Gallery Deposit

The exhibition, prepared by the Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, is a selective presentation of a collection which sent down roots when the Foksal Gallery was established in 1966 and which has been growing ever since.

To a great extent the collection is composed of works donated by artists following exhibitions and, as such, illustrates the gallery’s history. On the other hand it is the result of the complex relation leading the gallery towards the concept of collecting. Writing in the mid-1970s, Wies³aw Borowski and Andrzej Turowski remarked, “The colletion is being created in a gallery, or rather throughout a gallery, bursting and levelling out its archetypical models and the relations existing between the gallery and the artist”, and further, “Making a display of all the collection’s ominous properties should serve as a warning against the degeneration threatening the collection”.

Moreover, the Foksal Gallery Collection has two owners at present – the Mazowiecki Centre of Culture and Art and also the Foksal Gallery Foundation. It is held entirely in deposit in the Centre for Contemporary Art. This, in turn, reflects the complicated institutional perturbations which the Gallery has encountered during its 35 years. The Foksal Gallery collection, with its list of much respected names and serious works emulates the professionalism of museum collections while at the same time upholding its own conceptual character. Thus it is a living collection subject to a multitude of verifications and engaged in vital issues, which allows the works it holds to function in ever new, unexpected situations.

For this exhibition we have selected forty of around 200 works in the collection, guided not so much by their present aesthetic value but by their significance in the Gallery’s current activities. The symbolic entrance to the space reserved for the presentation of the Deposit is through a door leading from the apartment of Edward Krasinski, one of Foksal’s founders. The "a, e, i, o, u" sculpture by Miroslaw Balka is one of the objects presented, created especially for the Foksal Gallery in 1997.

The mental voyage through the exhibition can be made on white bus seats designed by Pawel Althamer. That apart, installations created by Katarzyna Jozefowicz are also on display, as well as an unknown project by Krzysztof Wodiczko, works by Henryk Stazewski and Tadeusz Kantor, Koji Kamoji, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager and Lawrence Weiner, among others.

Artists: Pawel Althamer, Miroslaw Balka, Robert Barry, Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren, Stanislaw Drozdz, Zbigniew Gostomski, Katarzyna Józefowicz, Koji Kamoji, Tadeusz Kantor, Edward Krasiñski, Anette Messager, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jadwiga Sawicka, Maria Stangret, Henryk Stazewski, Andrzej Szewczyk, Leon Tarasewicz, Lawrence Weiner, Krzysztof Wodiczko

Curators: Wieslaw Borowski, Malgorzata Jurkiewicz, Joanna Mytkowska, Andrzej Przywara, Adam Szymczyk

The Foksal Gallery Deposit
Galeria Foksal, Warschau
Kuratoren: Wieslaw Borowski, Malgorzata Jurkiewicz,
Joanna Mytkowska, Andrzej Przywara, Adam Szymczyk

Künstler: Pawel Althamer, Miroslaw Balka, Robert Barry, Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren, Stanislaw Drozdz, Zbigniew Gostomski, Katarzyna Jozefowicz, Koji Kamoji, Tadeusz Kantor, Edward Krasinski, Annette Messager, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jadwiga Sawicka, Maria Stangret, Henryk Stazewski, Andrzej Szewczyk, Leon Tarasewicz, Lawrence Weiner, Krzysztof Wodiczko