Stanisław Zamecznik
0047 and the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw present the exhibition The Space Between Us, opening Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 7pm at the Association of Polish Architects in Warsaw, Poland, as part of the ongoing project on the work of a forgotten architect, exhibition designer, and pioneer of environment art – Stanisław Zamecznik.
The Space Between Us is the first comprehensive presentation since 1973 of the work of Stanisław Zamecznik (1909–1971), one of the most interesting Polish architects of the 20th century. Zamecznik, who described his own work as „the art of space”, was an architect, exhibition designer and pioneer of environment art and collaborated with some of the most important figures of his time, such as Oskar Hansen, Jerzy Sołtan and Lech Tomaszewski.
The exhibition features reconstructions of displays and models, original drawings and photographic documentation from more than fifty of his projects. His work is presented in the context of other, contemporary and related events, offering an insight to the context of Stanislaw Zamecznik’s work.
The Space Between Us is a collaboration between The Modern Museum, Warsaw and 0047, Oslo.
Exhibition dates: October 7 – November 7, 2010
SARP: ul. Foksal 1, Warsaw, Poland
Curators: Tomasz Fudała, Marianne Zamecznik
Exhibition design: Piotr Zamecznik
Project assistant: Ewa Skolimowska
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The sixties were an especially fruitful period in the development of art exhibitions in Poland. During the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) temporary architecture was created from cardboard and plywood for propaganda exhibitions and international trade fairs. The temporary architecture became the practical ersatz of bolder, big-scale architectural concepts, which often remained unrealized in the architects’ sketchbooks. These were the visionary ideas and ephemeral designs that transformed exhibition pavilions throughout Europe and USA.
The protagonist of the exhibition The Space Between Us, Stanisław Zamecznik (1909-1971), one of Warsaw’s most interesting architects of the 20th century, did not construct any lasting structures. His profession, an exhibition designer, placed him on the margins of the architectural landscape. Zamecznik called his projects “spatial art.” He appreciated the freedom which working with exhibitions offered within the complicated, bureaucratic process of managing an architectural practice in the PRL. Treated with greater tolerance by the authorities and the architectural scene, nonetheless it constituted a niche wherein it was possible to implement the language of modern forms. Together with a group of architects and artists, Stanisław Zamecznik realized Warsaw’s most important museum exhibitions: the rearrangement of the National Museum, the Wilanów Poster Museum, the Museum of Literature and the Historical Museum of Warsaw. He sought new ways of creating space by introducing elements such as curved surfaces and hanging structures; forming new alliances between art and architecture.
The main axis of The Space Between Us is constituted by reconstructions of parts of Zamecznik’s major exhibition projects: the Warsaw edition of The Family of Man, a travelling American exhibition concept which used photography as a propaganda tool; the exhibition of Henryk Stażewski, that blurred the boundaries of modernist painting; the exhibition of Henry Moore, where Zamecznik entered into dialogue with the British sculptor’s works; and the Colour in Space, an installation realized together with Wojciech Fangor at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam - a so-called “environment” proposing the idea of the viewer being affected by color and shape within an abstract space.
The exhibition looks into the projects by Zamecznik and his colleagues from several perspectives - the architecture of world fairs, the institutionalization of artistic activity in the PRL, the Cold War debate on modern life reflected in interior decoration and design exhibitions - confronting them with other a vanguard proposals on exhibition design such Edward Steichen’s propaganda exhibitions, Frederick Kiesler’s mobile show for the Peggy Guggenheim gallery in New York, Oskar Hansen’s democratic idea of “receptive form” or František Tröster’s expositions, suspended between architecture and stage design.
The temporary architecture and spatial arrangements of Stanisław Zamecznik, which presently only exist as black and white photo documentation, advocated simultaneousness and the active role of the spectator as the work’s co-creator. Avoiding institutional conventions, it utilized the forms and shapes of modern interiors, industrial design, graphic art and photography. Creating exhibition spaces was not only the expression of an unhindered spatial imagination, but also an integral element of a contemporary visual culture, which inspired and affected many areas of everyday life.