Acute Corporeality

Acute Corporeality / 03.03.2023 - 30.03.2023

On 3 March, The City Gallery in Wrocław will present a cross-sectional display of artistic media and techniques that are employed in contemporary Polish art devoted to the theme of the body – from painting and sculpture, through ceramics and textile objects and up to intermedia projects. The exhibition focuses on tactile aspects of human corporeality.

“Acute Corporeality” exhibition explores the condition of the body in postmodern reality. It is thus a story of a body that has taken over the functions of the once hallowed face. The body which thinks, feels and produces meanings.
Currently, the shift of narrative accents from the face to the body is strongly visible in contemporary Polish art. Artists refer to corporeality in an affirmative context, treating it as the most direct medium for experiencing reality. They also use the body as a metaphor for trauma or disintegration, often emphasising its abject, i.e. repulsion-related, character. Sometimes artists integrate these two, seemingly extremely antagonistic, approaches to corporeality, and combine in their works both the category of physical pleasure and pain or disgust.

The featured artists make the body the focal point of cultural change. They apply a variety of creative strategies to place the body at an intersection of the social and the individual. In doing so, they warn of the new dangers which trap the body (nowadays ostensibly liberated) in postmodern reality.
In their stories, the artists rely strongly on haptics, connected with the bodily perception of artworks. Through it, the narrative potential of the objects is revealed not only through looking, but also through physical feelings produced by the sense of touch. The exhibited works can thus be viewed with eyes located in every centimetre of our skin. Moreover, the “acuteness” in the title can be read in two ways. Firstly, literally as the body’s characteristic sensitivity and reactivity to pain. Secondly, in the context of the tactile element present in each displayed work.

The exhibition “Acute Corporeality” is a conceptual continuation of “Crisis of the Face” show, presented at Wrocław City Gallery in March 2022.

The exhibition is on display until 30 March.
The official opening of the exhibition takes place on 2 March at 6:00pm.

Artists at the exhibition: Justyna Adamczyk, Roland Grabkowski, Julia Bodzioch Nowacka, Małgorzata Kalinowska, Paweł Matyszewski, Jan Możdżyński, Monika Mysiak, Agata Przyżycka, Beata Szczepaniak.

Curator: Katarzyna Zahorska.