kim? Contemporary Art Centre announces and invites you to the 5th and the final visit within the framework of Riga European Capital of Culture 2014 program’s project Waiting for.. (Archaeology of an Idea) – a talk by renowned Polish artist Mirosław Bałka and senior curator of Tate Liverpool Kasia Redzisz to discuss their work with Otwock, a project exploring relations between art, place and locality.
Otwock is described as a place with twofold meaning. It refers to the hometown of the sculptor, Mirosław Bałka, and the house of his childhood which he has turned into a studio. The studio triggered a reflection on the relations between art and place in which it is made. The town has become an expanded space of work.
Otwock is an exercise in creating a subjective description of the place. Invited artists, curators and writers work with the found context. The adopted method is best described by the notions of site specific and site responsive. The works, the elusive artistic gestures, the texts or events uncover new layers of meanings and form a loose grid of associations and connections. By mutually complementing each other, they pose questions and make proposals leading to changing interpretations and new ways of considering the local.
The artists working in Otwock so far include: Lara Almarcegui, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Tacita Dean, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Katharina Marszewski, Anna Molska, Charlotte Moth, Błażej Pindor, Luc Tuymans and Aleksandra Waliszewska.
Otwock is realized by Mirosław Bałka and Open Art Projects and is curated by Kasia Redzisz.
During the talk speakers will discuss Otwock within the context of Bałka’s practice as well as will introduce the curatorial approach behind the project.
The presentations will be open for questions from the audience. This event will be held English with translation in Latvian.
Mirosław Bałka was born in 1958 in Warsaw, Poland. Sculptor, also active on the field of experimental video and drawing. In 1985 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he runs Studio of Spatial Activities at the Department of Media from 2011. Received the Mies van der Rohe Stipend in Krefeld. The member of Akademie Der Kunste, Berlin. His works were exhibited on numerous international shows such as: Documenta, Kassel (1992), Venice Biennale (1990, 1993, 2003, 2005, 2013), The Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1995), Sao Paulo Biennale (1998), Sydney Biennale (1992, 2006), Santa Fe Biennale (2006). In 2009 he presented special project How It Is at Unilever Series, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern in London. Author of the memorial to the victims of the Estonia Ferry disaster in Stockholm (1997). His works are owned by museums worldwide, including: Tate Modern , London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; MOCA, Los Angeles; SFOMA, San Francisco; MOMA, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; Art Institute, Chicago; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museu Serralves, Porto; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kiasma, Helsinki; Kroller Muller, Otterlo; The National Museum of Art, Athens; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; The Israel Museu, Jerusalem. In Poland: Museum of Art, Lodz; Centre of Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; The National Museum, Wroclaw; MOCAK, Cracow.
Kasia Redzisz is an art historian and curator. In October 2014 she was appointed Senior curator at Tate Liverpool. Since 2010 she has been Assistant Curator at Tate Modern, where she has worked on the major exhibitions: Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan 2012, William Klein + Daido Moriyama (2012), Mira Schendel (2013) and Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010 (2014). She has also worked on the Turbine Hall commission Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds (2010) and curated group shows, such as Out of Place (2011) and Objects in Mirror Are Closer than They Appear (2012). In addition to her work on international exhibitions, she is involved in Tate collection, working on Russia and Eastern Europe Acquisition Committee. Prior to joining Tate Kasia worked at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. In 2007 she co-founded Open Art Projects, a non-profit organization devoted to contemporary art, where she runs a programme of commissions. Her recent projects include exhibitions, such as For Each Gesture Another Character at Art Stations Foundation in Poznan in 2014, and an ongoing collaboration with Mirosław Bałka on Otwock. She’s an author of texts about art and a regular contributor to frieze magazine.
