On 6^th January 2014 25 years will have passed since the commencing of the Round Table talks. On this occasion the MOCAK Collection has been enhanced by a new work – Antoni Michnik's The Ring, donated by the artist.

The Round Table talks, which took place from 6^th February to 5^th April 1989 between the communist authorities of The People's Republic of Poland and the Solidarity oppositon, were one of the most important events in the current history of Poland. It is these events that the newest work in the MOCAK Collection refers to. Antoni Michnik describes his work as an ideological homage to Marcel Duchamp on the 100^th anniversary of Bicycle Wheel (1913).

"The work incorporates the Round Table, with the author making it a work of art by renaming it. The result is an ideological work in the ready-made genre. What distinguishes the object from classical examples of this kind is the fact that the object to which the semantic procedure has been applied is not in the possession of the artist. The Round Table – where the the most important political discussions took place in 1989 – is on display at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw and physically out of bounds both to the artist and the Museum. Presentation of the work can take place by drawing, documentation or using a model. What is significant is the artist’s name and the title. One cannot of course preclude the possibility that one day The Ring will be loaned by the Museum to be exhibited in its physical form". Maria Anna Potocka

The Ring is:

an ideological work, a homage to Marcel Duchamp on the 100th anniversary of the ready-made;

a contextual work, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Round Table events;

a conceptual work, a call to encourage active conceptualism;

a political gesture, which assumes a broad understanding of the political approach.

The work enters into the fray of the symbolic struggle to comprend contemporaneity. Antoni Michnik

Antoni Michnik – a member of “Political Critique” and academic and artistic ETC Group interested in the artistic tradition of neo-avant-garde movements, experimental music and intermedia arts. He collaborates with various institutions, organises academic, popularizing or atistic events in which he tries to bring together different perspectives.