Archive

Nature in Art

At the exhibition Nature in Art we show contemporary works of more than 70 artists from many countries, in techniques ranging from painting, photography and video to object and installation. The exhibition has been divided into five parts: Beauty, Ecology, Confrontation, Matter and Symbol.

Ten Jews Who Made Poland Famous

The series of paintings by Beata Stankiewicz entitled Ten Jews Who Made Poland Famous is a deliberate reference to Andy Warhol’s series Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century. Both series present figures whose fame and greatness mattered more than their ethnicity. Both artists suggest – with a certain dose of bitterness – that bias against Jews can only be tempered by their individual genius.

Where One Cannot Speak: Word as Image, Image as Word

At the exhibition we present dozens of the collages by the Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature Herta Müller, which she created during 2005–2018. This is the first-ever presentation of these works in a museum of contemporary art.

Lodz Film School: The Young Generation

At the exhibition we will be showing the end-of-year etudes by first-year students of the Film and TV Directing Departmentat the Lodz Film School, produced in the documentary studio led by Grażyna Kędzielawska and Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz.

The Polish Phantom

In MOCAK Library, we present a selection of her photographs from the series The Polish Phantom. The exhibition comprises five parts (Warsaw, Nowa Huta, Krakow, Auschwitz, Kielce). Contemporary photographs document objects, spaces and places related to World War II and Polish People’s Republic.

Violence and Memory

The exhibition presents archival photographic materials from the race and folklore sections as well as the landscape sections of the Institute of German Works in the East. (IDO), which are now to be found at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Jagiellonian University and in the Jagiellonian University Archives. The photographs created during World War II, mainly of the Podhale and Lemko highlanders, were incorporated into the symbolic form of the Carpathian iconostasis.

LEBENSMITTEL

The LEBENSMITTEL (Foodstuffs) photobook and exhibition project by the German photographer Michael Schmidt, born in Berlin in 1945, comprises 177 photographs, taken between 2006 and 2010, on twenty-six trips around Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, and Spain. The photographs were shot at feedlots and slaughterhouses, fish farms and commercial greenhouses, fruit farms and vegetable plantations, pasta factories and cheese dairies, as well as at various plants processing meat, potatoes, and insects.

Pompier, Muck, Socrococo

Artist Anna Orłowska, chose the Lenin Steelworks’ fortress-like administrative centre, popularly known as the ‘Doge’s Palace’, as the starting point for her exhibition. In addition to photographing of the ‘Doge’s Palace’, Orłowska took shots of the nineteenth-century manor house of painter Jan Matejko, located just a kilometre away. The physical proximity of these two buildings, constructed in eras so apparently mutually antithetical, became a point of departure for reflections on the intellectual and formal affinities between the art of Matejko – the greatest of Polish pompiers – and socialist realism.

Clinic

The materials presented in the exhibition come from the production Clinic by Łukasz Surowiec, staged in Poznań at the end of October 2016. His protagonists were incurable actively drinking alcoholics, mostly homeless, who – due to their life situation and administrative requirements – were unable to undertake effective therapy.

Vote Together

Guests at the MOCAK Café had the opportunity to see Vote Together posters designed by Wolfgang Tillmans.

Karl Marx vs Moby Dick: An Analysis of Form and Demolition of Ideas

Moby Dick and Karl Marx dominate the creative output of Krzysztof M. Bednarski. The first is represented as a simple, smooth object that inspires thoughtful reflection. The other as a dishevelled head, which provokes discussion. Moby Dick symbolises a mirror that reveals the depravity of human nature. Marx symbolises the regard for human fate, a regard that has inspired political crimes. KMB employs both these objects in terms of both form and ideas.

Walking Wounded

Markus Muntean and Adi Rosenblum have been an artistic duo since 1992. They are known primarily as authors of monumental compositions – group scenes accompanied by quotations from literature. The protagonists of their paintings are young people whose figures have been repainted from photographic materials from the artists’ archives, magazines and the internet.

The Language of Flowers

For Akira Inumaru, nature is an inspiration and material. The artist uses flowers and dyes obtained from plants, and subjects them to the impact of the sun.

Crime?

The subject of the Mac Adams’ fascination and source of inspiration are situations which are both ambiguous and disturbing. He creates installations and photographs in which he manipulates the perception of viewers in such a way that they have the impression of watching a crime scene.

The Studio of Łukasz Skąpski

At the exhibition we show photographs, videos and objects by students and graduates of the Skąpski Studio of Photography and Artistic Strategies at the Academy of Art in Szczecin.

Pop-Art After the Holocaust

Boris Lurie (1924–2008) was an American artist, who was born into a Jewish family in Leningrad (today Saint Petersburg). Lurie’s creative output encompassed many fields: he was a visual artist – creating paintings, installation and objects – as well as a writer and poet. His was art that was politically engaged and called for social action, art that was spontaneous, anarchic and therapeutic.

Polish Cut-Outs

Polish Cut-Outs by Alicja Biała are an ever-expanding collection of over 40 collages. The biggest ones are compositions more than two metres long. The exhibition will feature both new cut-outs and those illustrating Marcin Świetlicki’s selection of poems Poland (A Collection of Patriotic Songs).

Motherland in Art

The key concept of ‘motherland’ has been undergoing a great and at times painful modernisation in today’s world.

MOCAK Collection: Polish Collection of Josef Kloppenborg

The new exhibition of the MOCAK Collection consists of two distinct and very different parts. The first one is Polish collection of Josef Kloppenborg. In the second part, we present the sculpture and objects that the Museum has acquired in the last three years.

To the Absolute through the Abstract

Today, the works of Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart can be found in the most important museum collections throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In the Museum in Wiesbaden there is an archive devoted to the artist and it is there that the largest institutional collection of Vordemberge-Gildewart’s works can be found. At the exhibition we present over 20 works from the collections of the museums in Osnabrück and Wiesbaden, as well as art galleries in Berlin and London and private collections.

Play within the Walls of the Academy

At the exhibition we present the works of current students and recent graduates of the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vilnius (Vilniaus dailės akademija). The objects, installations and films on display were created during 2014–2018 under the guidance of Deimantas Narkevičius. Their formal and thematic diversity results from the teaching methods used and the approach to art.

Award of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation 2018

Each year, the course funded by the grant from the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation in Switzerland takes place in different countries. In 2011 MOCAK organised its first Polish edition, with the participation of 15 artists. Their works were presented in the exhibition Award of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation. From amongst them, the international jury, appointed by the Foundation’s Council, selected three winners: the first prize (20 000 Swiss francs) went to Anna Okrasko, and two distinctions (of 10 000 Swiss francs each) – to Róża Litwa and Jan Dziaczkowski.

In Search of the Total Drawing

At the exhibition we present drawings by Dietrich Helms (b. 1933) from 1954–2006. The earliest date back to when the artist was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg.

Elusive noise: unfolding the virtual (2014-2018)

The exhibition is part of the Krakow Photomonth 2018 Festival.

Extraction (2017-2018)

The exhibition is part of the Krakow Photomonth 2018 Festival.

Artists from Krakow: The Generation 1970–1979

Artists from Krakow: Generation 1970–1979 is the second in our biennial series, in which we show the most important trends in Krakow’s contemporary art. The artists presented in the current exhibition graduated at the turn of the 20th century. The majority are familiar on the international art circuit and some are lecturers at art academies.

Nonsense Technologies

Since 2015, Przemysław Jasielski and Rainer Prohaska have been working on their concept of ‘nonsense technologies’; in joint exhibitions, they have shown their works which ironically combine art and sciences. At MOCAK, we will be showing interactive objects and installations from 2009–2017.

New Trends in Art

In the history of Polish art, Leon Chwistek has made his name as a trend setter. He was a philosopher and logician but he was also fascinated by the avant-garde tension of his time. Endowed with considerable intellectual and artistic potential, he saw it as his duty to influence the shape of the changes to come. First, he became involved in the formist movement, becoming its intellectual spokesman.

Play on Meanings

The exhibition has been devised by Jarosław Kozłowski. Professor invited his ex-students to show their works at the Re Gallery.

Poetry and Art on the Brink of Nazism

Joachim Ringelnatz (1883–1934) is one of the classics of German poetry. Snippets of his humorous verse that distances itself from the reality are still popular today as topical aphorisms. In Cuxhaven, a town with close links to the poet, there is the Ringelnatz Museum. Ringelnatz was also a painter; his paintings, however, have not been very well known.

Lagertheater

Between 1939 and 1945, in concentration camps and POW camps there was theatre. Much has been written about the artistic activities of the prisoners in such camps but we do not have much information about performative creativity. The present exhibition provides the first-ever opportunity to take a close look at theatrical activity in the camps.

Art in Art

Art in Art is another exhibition in our series that confronts important areas of life with their perception by artists. This exhibition will, however, differ from the others.

Landscape after the Holocaust

With his life and art, Jonasz Stern left a permanent mark on the Polish art of the 20th century. Before the war, he was a member of the first Grupa Krakowska (Krakow Group), and in 1957 he co‑founded Grupa Krakowska II, with members including Maria Jarema and Tadeusz Kantor. These were the two most significant artistic formations in Poland.

Poland ↔ Israel

The exhibition in the Re Gallery has been organised in collaboration with Miri Segal, PhD, the head of the Postgraduate Fine Art Program at Hamidrasha Beit Berl College in Kfar Saba, Israel – as part of the aforementioned program.

The Artist and the Trace: Materials from the MOCAK Collection Artists' Archive

The exhibition is the first in a series intended to popularise the MOCAK Archive collection. The objects on display are testimony to artistic processes and ephemeral performative actions. The unique archival material documents public actions, artistic projects, and exhibitions from the period 1973–2004.

Grapevine: 1988–1992

The exhibition is organized as a part of the Krakow Photomonth 2017 Festival.

A New Archaeology for Liban and Płaszów

The exhibition is organized as a part of the Krakow Photomonth Festival 2017.

Art Taken Out of the Ordinary

One can judge an artist by whether he has discovered his own method of ‘processing the world’ – one that opens the eyes of others to new symbolic areas. Daniel Spoerri is a great artistic discoverer.

Sensations of Reality and Conceptual Practices 1965–1980

The exhibition is another in the series of individual presentations of artists from the MOCAK Collection. We are showing Jarosław Kozłowski's early works from the period 1965-1980: drawings, sketches, photographs, paintings, as well as installations and assemblages. They are an expression of the artist's personal experiences placed in a political-historical context.

The Sea

The motif of the sea has been present in art and literature for centuries. The presentation in Alfa Gallery shows a variety of works executed in different media by contemporary artists from Poland and other countries, who have been inspired by this theme.

Grenzsituationen

The twentieth-century existential philosopher Karl Jaspers introduced the concept of Grenzsituationen, limit situations; amongst these extreme situations he included death, struggle, suffering and guilt.

Social Performance

Katarzyna Bobiec and Dominika Borkowska are students of artistic mediation at the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. In Re Gallery they have arranged interactive spaces inspired by their performance activities.

Medicine in Art

Medicine in Art is another exhibition in the series that confronts terms permeating the public sphere of reference with the viewpoint of the artist.

Still Life: Psychological Portrait

The exhibition will present two series combining photographs and text. The images show carefully arranged food items and everyday objects. The series Not So Miscellany is reminiscent of traditional still lifes, whilst works from the series Hyper Reality are open compositions.

Trial Print

The exhibition presents works created in 2014–2016 in the Copperplate Engraving Studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow under Professor Krzysztof Tomalski.

Making Connections

The exhibition of works by Robert Devriendt is another individual presentation of artists from the MOCAK Collection.

Aneta Grzeszykowska

The exhibition is organized as a part of the Krakow Photomonth Festival 2016.

Max Pinckers Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty*

The exhibition is organized as a part of the Krakow Photomonth Festival 2016.

Looking for Yourself in Others

Looking for Yourself in Others is an exhibition of 13 drawings by Tomasz Wiatr at the MOCAK Library. A doctor from Krakow, he embarked on a creative way of spending his leisure time and began a parallel life as an artist.

Artists from Krakow: The Generation 1980–1990

MOCAK is embarking on a series of exhibitions showing the oeuvres of artists who live and work in Krakow. These presentations will encompass a variety of media. The series is inaugurated with a show of artists born between 1980 and 1990.

When Politics Enters Daily Life

In his distinctive art practice, Hungarian artist Csaba Nemes critically investigates sites of social and economic imbalances, the unexpected overlaps between personal and political history, and instances of friendship in times of despair. The exhibition at MOCAK presents Nemes’s singular artistic achievement that deftly branches into painting, drawing, film, animation and photography.

Beuys, Kantor, Demarco

The exhibition is devoted to the three artists Joseph Beuys, Tadeusz Kantor and Richard Demarco.

Young Painting from Linz

The exhibition at the Re Gallery at MOCAK will present works by six students at the University of Art and Design Linz in Austria.

Poetry and Photography – The ‘Blue Pueblo’ Project

The exhibition is pivoted on a fusion of poetry and photography. In 2013, Grzegorz Wróblewski wrote his poem Blue Pueblo. Inspired by it, Wojciech Wilczyk took a series of photographs of Amager, the district of Copenhagen where the poet lives. The poem and a series of black-and-white photographs, displayed on the wall side by side, all combine into the project Blue Pueblo.

Impossible Objects

The first edition of the exhibition Impossible Objects took place in the Polish Pavilion at the 14th Biennale of Architecture in Venice. At MOCAK we will be showing the most significant element of the project that represented Poland at the Architecture Biennale.

Poland – Israel – Germany: The Experience of Auschwitz

The exhibition at MOCAK highlights the significant presence of the theme of Auschwitz in the historical, social and cultural discourse. It demonstrates how contemporary artists from Poland, Israel and Germany interpret events from the past. This is not about presenting art broadly thematically related to the Holocaust, rather – about works that deal with the ‘anus mundi’– Auschwitz as a place of genocide, the most tragic man-made symbol there is.

Gender in Art

Gender in Art is another project in MOCAK's series that confronts significant civilisational themes with artist's interpretation. The international exhibition will feature works of about forty artists. The accompanying publication, beside documenting the exhibition, will be a collection of essays which will present the issue from different perspectives.

S/he

At the exhibition we present works by four students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. The works illustrate the changes that have taken place in the social roles designated to men or women. The subject matter of S/he is related to the exhibition presented in the main part of the museum – Gender in Art.

People

The exhibition is part of the series of exhibitions at MOCAK that aim to enhance the creative image of well-known. We will be showing a few dozen of his sketches of faces. These are from a selection of a few hundred of the poet’s drawings from the collection of the National Library of Poland in Warsaw.

Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century

At the exhibition we show the eponymous series that portrays the most prominent 20th-century personalities of Jewish extraction. Amongst them are academics, politicians and figures related to the world of culture such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Golda Meir, Gertrude Stein and Franz Kafka.

Space: The MOCAK Collection

Space is the first exhibition of works from the MOCAK Collection and Archive to be presented at Krakow Live Festival. The exhibition, in which we will be presenting some 30 objects, sculptures and installations, is part of the programme Art at the Festival.

Lighting Studio

The year 2015 was proclaimed by UNESCO as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies. Therefore at Re Gallery we present lamp designs by the students of the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.

Indrė Šerpytytė, 1944–1991

The exhibition as part of Krakow Photomonth Festival.

Logical Emotion: Contemporary Art from Japan

The leitmotif of the exhibition can be encapsulated in two concepts – often treated as each other’s antithesis – ‘logic’ and ‘emotion’. The organisers of the exhibition hold that the tension between these concepts is the pivot of contemporary Japanese art. The exhibition aims to discover the essence of the ‘Japanese identity’, presenting it in different contexts and attempting to define distinguishing features of its aesthetics.

Omer Fast

Omer Fast’s exhibition at MOCAK will be the artist’s first larger presentation in Poland. We will show four video installation. Omer Fast is part of the programme of individual exhibitions showing the output of artists represented at the MOCAK Collection.

Two Series

The second in the series of Mikołaj Smoczyński’s exhibitions is based entirely on his works in the MOCAK Collection; we will be presenting two of the earliest photographic series by the artist: Double Object and The Secret Performance.

Nikifors

Nikifor Krynicki is the pivotal point of the exhibition. Other artists on display represent a philosophy and artistic approach similar to the Master from Krynica.

Young Israel

The first exhibition at Re Gallery by artists from outside Poland. We present video works by young Israeli artists – Ben Hagari and Nadav Bin-Nun.

The MOCAK Collection

The most recent exhibition of the MOCAK Collection, while retaining several works of art from its previous opening, has been extended to include the works acquired in the last two years. Just like in previous year the exhibition is divided into sections according to the media in which the works were created. Our main focus are the most important ones: photography, painting, sculpture and video.

Sculptures, Paintings, Films

At the exhibition of Julian Opie, one of the leading contemporary British artists, we will be presenting his new works, the majority prepared especially for the Krakow exhibition. The prevailing themes are people and nature.

Installation or Object? Works from the MOCAK Collection

At the exhibition we will show over a dozen works from the Museum’s Collection. Some of them have never been before been shown at MOCAK. Within the scope expressed in its title – Installation or Object? – the show examines the problem of fluidity of media in contemporary art.

Object, Space, Photography

The first in the series of exhibitions at MOCAK presenting the oeuvre of Mikołaj Smoczyński. The show is based entirely on the works of art and archives bequeathed to the Museum by the artist’s heirs in 2011.

America Is Not Ready For This

In 2011 Karol Radziszewski decided to set off to America in the footsteps of Natalia LL. The exhibition, which consists of the documentation of his encounters there, as well as his email correspondence and archive photos, creates a new portrait of Natalia LL.

Literary Inspirations

The artist who finds inspiration in literature tries to visualise what the writer has left to the reader’s imagination. The exhibition concentrates on works that relate to narratives in which the world is a place as magical as it is absurd, full of incredible phenomena.

I Am a Drop in the Ocean: Art of the Ukrainian Revolution

At all times, art accompanied the protests; it was a sphere of freedom, an expression of resistance to Russian influence in the corrupt state.

Crime in Art

Crime in Art is the 4th exhibition to date in MOCAK’s series which combines art with the most significant civilisational themes such as history, sport, science and religion. Crime reveals all the inner fanatical turmoil, bleak helplessness and wrong without atonement.

Figure and Design (MOCAK Collection)

The new exhibition of the MOCAK Collection presents sculptures and objects that the Museum has acquired in the last three years.

Utopian Pulse – Flares in the Darkroom

Presentation of the initiative by Ines Doujak and Oliver Ressler,
which has been carried out since 2014. As one of its parts, the
invited artists and activists create designs of banners which show
utopian projects.

Quotes from the Collection

Quotes from the Collection is a year-long project at the MOCAK Library that will provide a framework for the presentation and discussion of selected works from the MOCAK Collection. The project will provide an opportunity to get to know works that are not at present part of the Collection exhibition as well as an incentive to analyse the creativity of selected artists in
an unhurried and in-depth way.

An Ingenious Psychoholic

The exhibition, curated by Maria Anna Potocka, will present works produced by Witkacy’s famous Portrait Company and series of the artist’s posed self-portraits.

Im Heimweh ist ein blauer Saal

At the exhibition at the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen, co-organised by MOCAK, we will show 220 collages by Herta Müller. The presentation accompanies the premiere of the book Im Heimweh ist ein blauer Saal, published by Hanser-Verlag.

MOCAK Collection: Artist in the Field of Art

Between 30 May – 2 June 2019 there will take place the jubilee 10th edition of the International Fair of Contemporary ArtVilnius’19. It will be accompanied by a special exhibition programme, as part of which MOCAK – for the fourth time – will be presenting some of its collection.

An Ingenious Psychoholic

The exhibition, curated by Maria Anna Potocka, will present works produced by Witkacy’s famous Portrait Company and series of the artist’s posed self-portraits.

Witkacy: The Genius Troublemaker

Witkacy started on his creative path as a painter. Painting, however, was to disappoint him. He came to see it as a craft, and so he set up the Portrait Painting Company, and painted some 4 500 portraits, the majority of which perished by fire in Warsaw during the war. The idea behind Witkacy’s company and its rules were a forerunner of conceptualism. He next experimented with image through photography, a medium in which he could see fully his wild, unbridled personality.

Exhibitions accompanying the Danish premiere of the opera The Passenger in Aarhus

As part of the programme accompanying the premiere of the opera The Passenger at the Den Jyske Opera in Aarhus (Denmark), there will be two exhibitions devoted to the life and work of Zofia Posmysz. The exhibitions can be seen from 3 to 28 August in the foyer of the Concert Hall of the Danish National Opera and in the Women’s Museum in Aarhus, curated by Maria Anna Potocka, Director of MOCAK.

The MOCAK Collection: The New History in Art

During 7–10 June the International Contemporary Art Fair ArtVilnius’18 will take place in the capital of Lithuania – the largest such event in the Baltic countries.

The Passenger

The exhibition is accompanying the premiere of the opera The Passenger based on the novel by Zofia Posmysz at the Semperoper Dresden.

MOCAK Collection at the MBWA in Leszno

The exhibition MOCAK Collection at the MBWA in Leszno is part of a research project that our Museum has been conducting over a number of years, aiming to analyse the social function of art understood not as pleasurable pastime but above all as a means to understand and change the world.

Second Generation: Graphic Novel by Michel Kichka

The exhibition is part of the programme accompanying the premiere of the opera The Passenger at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen.

Zofia Posmysz: Auschwitz and Literature

The exhibition is part of the programme accompanying the premiere of the opera The Passenger at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen.

Ryszard Krynicki. Sehen wir uns noch?

To coincide with the publication of Ryszard Krynicki’s collection of poems Sehen wir uns noch? by the German publishing house Hanser, MOCAK in collaboration with the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen has prepared an exhibition dedicated to his works.

Literary Images of the Holocaust: The Passenger by Zofia Posmysz

The exhibition is part of the programme accompanying the premiere of the opera The Passenger at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen.

L’arte differente: MOCAK al MAXXI
Exhibition of works from the MOCAK Collection in Rome

This will be the first such large scale and comprehensive presentation of works from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cracow, MOCAK, to be presented in Italy. We will be presenting over 50 works including paintings, photographs, video, installations, and objects.

Landscape after the Holocaust

MOCAK Collection in Vilnius

From 9 until 12 June, at the Lithuanian Exhibition and Congress Centre Litexpo in Vilnius, the 7th edition of the International Contemporary Art Fair ArtVilnius’16 will take place. This is one of the most prominent events of this kind in the Baltic states.

Death Does Not Have the Last Word: The Experience of Auschwitz Today in the Center for Persecuted Arts in the Art Museum Solingen

From December, in the Center for Persecuted Arts in the Art Museum Solingen it will be possible to view part of the exibition previously presented at MOCAK: Poland – Israel – Germany: The Experience of Auschwitz.

Nikifors in Zakopane

The first presentation of the exhibition Nikifors took place at MOCAK. Its second facet shown at the Tatra Museum in Zakopane has been organised as part of the 41st Academic Symposium ʻModern Economy and Public Administrationʼ.

Inner Space in Wałbrzych

An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of the Józef Babiński Specialist Hospital in Krakow. From 17 November it will be transferred to the Książ Palace in Walbrzych.

Krzysztof Niemczyk exhibition in Rome

From 3 until 28 November 2014 as part of the project In Polonia per saziare l´amore at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere there is on the exhibition of Krzysztof Niemczyk.

Inner Space in Leszno

An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of the Józef Babiński Specialist Hospital in Krakow. From 14 October until 13 November the exhibition will be presented in the District Museum in Leszno.