Arton Review Europe - exhibition and film screening

TheOfice gallery
Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art
11-15th April 2016

Kumu Art Film Festival
KUMU, Tallin, Estonia
29.09-02.10.2016
Curator: Jagna Lewandowska

Arton Review Europe is a cycle of screenings based on the resources of the Digital Repository of the Arton Foundation. Young Polish artists were invited to work with the film archives and to create a series of experimental films and videos inspired by the work of the Polish avant-garde masters of the 1970s.
The Arton Foundation is a non-profit organisation which concentrates on researching and exhibiting Polish art of the 1970s and cataloguing private archives of artists. Artworks, documents, negatives, films etc. form a database of the Polish art scene of those years (Arton’s Repository) that is promoted by Arton’s publications, exhibitions and films.

Some of the Arton programme films can be viewed for the duration of the festival at screenings in the lobby of the Kumu auditorium.
Film Program, 30th of September, 4 PM

Introduction by Jagna Lewandowska, Łukasz Sosinski

10 Works (Visual Principles)
Dir Wojciech Bruszewski, Poland 1973, 7’49’’

Cardboard
Dir Piotr Bosacki, Poland 2014, 3’39’’

Self-evident Things
Dir Piotr Bosacki, Poland 2013, 10’

Conversation with God II
Dir Paweł Kwiek, Poland 1990, 10’19’’

Telepathy
Dir Łukasz Jastrubczak, Poland 2014, 3’3’’

I’m Going
Dir Józef Robakowski, Poland 1973, 2’56’’

1, 2, 3, 4 (Light Cheeks)
Dir Józef Robakowski, Poland 1993, 1’36’’

The Wall
Dir Wojciech Bąkowski, Poland 2010, 5’20”

To Lamp from Lamp
Dir Wojciech Bąkowski, Poland 2011, 3’14”

So that you continue like this
Dir Wojciech Bąkowski, Poland 2010, 5’43”

The Straight Curve
Dir Ryszard Waśko, Poland 1973, 7’13”

Cruising the neighbourhood, thinking
Dir Łukasz Sosiński, Poland 2016, 3’38”

Identity
Dir Henryk Gajewski, Poland 1985, 12’02”

ID
Dir Karol Radziszewski, Poland 2016, 6’21”


Screenings in the lobby:
Documentation of travelling gallery, Szalona Gallery, 2016
Occurance, Agnieszka Lasota, 2014


The exhibition in Riga presented video works that have been inspired by two Polish artworks – Romuald Kutera’s ‘Here’ (1975) and Paweł Kwiek’s ‘Line’ (1978). A selection of films demonstrated how specific camera work can direct the gaze of a viewer to certain parts of reality, manipulating with attention and creating rules leading to the ‘correct’ interpretation.
This exhibition introduced the film screening ‘Arton Review Europe’. As part of this project new Polish directors worked with video footage in Arton’s archive from the 70s, using it to create new artistic films and video works. With their meticulous approach, works selected for this screening brought us closer to artists who experimented with the medium of film many decades ago. The Arton Review shows works by these artists: Wojciech Bąkowski, Piotr Bosacki, Wojciech Bruszewski, Łukasz Jastrubczak, Paweł Kwiek, Karol Radziszewski, Józef Robakowski and Łukasz Sosiński.
Piotr Bosacki was one of the special guests at this event. His practice is multidisciplinary and actively spans several fields such as visual art, music, animation and literature, in addition to filmmaking, which he considers to be his preferred medium. His films can be described as poetic, minimalistic, witty and full of contradictions, which always highlight serious existential and philosophical questions.

Co-financed by Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage