Exhibition view

Program Gallery Gen. Andersa Str. 20 00-201 Warsaw Poland (city map) Send E-mail tel +48 (0)22 - 635 40 44 www.artprogram.art.pl

INVITATION FOR EXHIBITION

ASTEISM
Joke and authority

Opening: AUGUST, 9 2007, 7 P.M.
Duration: 10.08 - 2.09. 2007

curator: Kazimierz Piotrowski
consultant: Józef Robakowski

In cooperation with CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART UJAZDOWSKI CASTLE

Asteism considers the power of wit in art while striving to avoid any reduction of this issue to the aesthetic contemplation of comedy or ridiculousness.

Asteism (Gr. asteios - witty, educated, urbane) is one of the chief trends in art today and as such is dismantling art?s existing cosmos and turning it into a cosmos (Gr. ordered arrangement) of jokes and witticisms. Can asteism - a rhetorical trope denoting wit lacking vulgarity ? become a category describing contemporary mentality?.

Many contemporary artists produce works that seem designed to elicit the impression of their hanging by a hair, to quote the title of Tadeusz Kantor?s 1973 exhibition at the Foksal Gallery. Alternatively, they structure the perceivable elements of their projects so that what is often makeshift or surprising humor completes them. This type of asteism-based mindset is particularly evident in urban culture, which emphasizes and esteems conversational abilities and social tact. Recent years have witnessed the crystallization of an extremely asteist variety of art criticism that is distinctive enough to warrant its inclusion, on par with art, in publications and exhibitions that explore asteism, a trend that seems to be as distinctive today as Cubism and Formism were in their time.

In studying the issue of asteism we look not only to Classical culture and the purposeful nature of Socratic irony, but we note as well the explorations of wit (Ger. der Witz) present in the anthropology of Locke, Kant or Helmuth Plessner. The Asteism exhibition is interdisciplinary and particularly philosophical in nature. A publication and academic conference will supplement the presentation.

Artists: Akademia Ruchu [Janusz Bałdyga , Wojciech Krukowski, Krzysztof Żwirblis, Azorro [Oskar Dawicki, Wojciech Niedzielko, Igor Krenz, Łukasz Skąpski, Krzysztof Bednarski, Marcin Berdyszak, Andrzej Barański, Agata Bogacka, Walerian Borowczyk, Wojciech Bruszewski, Rafał Bujnowski, Tomasz Ciecierski, Hubert Czerepok, Włodek Filipek, Waldemar Frydrych (Pomarańczowa Alternatywa), Marek Glinkowski, Artur Grabowski, Ryszard Grzyb, Rafał Jakubowicz , Zuzanna Janin, Paweł Jarodzki, Agnieszka Kalinowska, Tadeusz Kantor, Leszek Knaflewski, Marek Konieczny, Jerzy Kosałka, Marek Koterski, Grzegorz Kowalski, Katarzyna Kozyra, Piotr Kurka, Edward Krasińsk, Mariusz Kruk, Jacek Kryszkowski (repr. Jerzy Truszkowski), Kamil Kuskowski, Paweł Kwiek, Przemysław Kwiek, Jan Lenica, Zbigniew Libera, Łódź Kaliska [Marek Janiak, Andrzej Kwietniewski, Adam Rzepecki, Andrzej Świetlik , Andrzej Wielogórski], Janusz Majewski, Małgorzata Markiewicz, Sławomir Marzec, Jacek Niegoda, Andrzej Partum (repr. Wanda Lacrampe), Andrzej Paruzel, Mateusz Pęk, Żuk Piwkowski, Marek Piwowski, Roman Polański, Marta Pszonak , Julian Raczko, Józef Robakowski[Józef Korbiela], Andrzej Różycki, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Zygmunt Rytka, Wawrzek Sawicki, Tomasz Sikorski, Aleksandra Ska, Kajetan Sosnowski, Marek Sobczyk , Paweł Susid, Grzegorz Sztabiński, Stanisław Szukalski, Jan Świdziński, Leon Tarasewicz, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Warsztat Formy Filmowej [Wojciech Bruszewski, Józef Robakowski, Ryszard Waśko], Ryszard Waśko, Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski Ryszard Woźniak, Wojciech Wiszniewsk, Anastazy Wiśniewski, Wojciech Zamiara, Krzysztof Zarębski, Wojciech Zasadni, Alicja Żebrowska, Artur Żmijewski