26-06-2020
26-07-2020
To Whom Does the Cosmos Belong? is the first exhibition of the works of Zygmunt Rytka to have been realised by utilising the late artist’s digitised archive. The structural starting point for the exhibition is the Photovision series, the main part of which was created between 1978–1983. This was a period spanning the end of the Gierek era, with its attempts at creating a socialist consumer society; subsequent strikes and the struggle for the legalisation of the Solidarity labour movement; and the declaration and imposition of martial law in Poland, accompanied by increasing propaganda and manipulation of mass media through information channels controlled by the regime. During this time, Rytka embarked on a project oriented around photographing his television screen. He took more than 5,000 pictures from this vantage, the majority of which have never been published. These photographs capture not only the political and cultural climate of Poland in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but they also transcend literality, forming a stream of unsettling images, as if unspooling from the collective consciousness of modern society.