Love Affair with Graphics. From Albers to Vostell

The exhibition presents 92 works authored by 35 prominent and recognized artists from the second half of the 20th century, originally from Europe and the USA, including Karel Appel, Arman, George Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Allen Jones, Roberto Matta, Mimmo Paladino, Roy Lichtenstein and others. The prints are on loan from the permanent collection Le Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles in La Louvière (Belgium).

The idea which gave birth to the exhibition titled Love Affair with Graphics. From Albers to Vostell, was the conviction about the versatility and attractiveness of printmaking as a medium of art, together with its diversity of techniques and varieties.

Equally important was the presentation of contexts in which this medium was employed by prominent artists of the second half of the 20th century, who were seldom directly associated with this discipline. It was through the reflections on the reasons which led individual artists to use etching, dry point, lithography or serigraphy that the exhibition title emerged.

Love affair is a condition intensely marked with infatuation. At the same time, the term clearly indicates certain fortuitousness and transience of the relationship. Love affairs may be passionate, ardent, secretive, and yet hardly ever long-term. On the other hand, love affairs are usually initiated with someone – in this case: something – attractive, alluring, possessing magic charm which captivates us for longer or shorter periods of time. Thirdly, a love affair is something to remember and recall with fondness, a part of life we preserve warm feelings for. A romance tends to leave its traces, including those of material nature such as a perfume-scented note, a dried rose, a blurred photograph that captured the lovers’ blissfully happy faces.
These traces are not numerous, yet they are important, valued, and preserved with special care. It is these various traces of contemporary artists’ love affair with printmaking that we can find in this exhibition. They include both single prints and entire visual series and feature objects in the form of limited prints portfolios as well as fragments of a larger entity. The exhibition narrative does not guide us through any predetermined themes. Neither the ideas standing behind the prints nor the meanings they imply were used to group the presented works. Each artist has his or her own place, since a love affair constitutes something personal, intimate, something that is created between the author and the medium. The exhibition leads us through the history of successive infatuations and allows the visitors to taste the works of each artists individually.

The exhibition presents 92 works (109 individual works, including one consisting of 18 parts) selected and on loan from the permanent collection of Le Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles in La Louvière (Belgium).

Artists whose works are presented at the exhibition include:
Josef Albers, Pierre Alechinsky, Carl Andre, Karel Appel, Arman, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Marcel Broodthaers, Sophie Calle, Eduardo Chillida, Peter Downsbrough, Jean Dubuffet, Félix Gonzales-Torres, Allen Jones, Asger Jorn, Ellswort Kelly, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Roberto Matta, Annette Messager, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, Mimmo Paladino, Sigmar Polke, Arnulf Rainer, Kiki Smith, Nancy Spero, Daniel Spoerri, Antoni Tapies, Roland Topor, Victor Vasarely, Wolf Vostell.

Curator: Marta Anna Raczek-Karcz
Layout: Tomasz Wójcik