Opening: 22 October 2024, 6pm
Exhibition: 23 – 30 October 2024
The exhibition will be open Tuesday-Sunday, from 12pm to 7pm
Teatr Studio, Foyer
Tomasz Szerszeń’s exhibition Rear Window is the first public presentation of a project which has been in the making for the past five years. It is a recording, by means of analogue photography from the windows of Galeria Studio, of the changes occurring on Warsaw’s Plac Defilad [Parade Square] and Plac Centralny [Central Square] in particular. The vantage point is of significance: the windows of the exhibition galleries, the office space, the view from the balcony. The black and white photographs always hint at the position of the observer, discreetly revealing his point of view and the moment in the gallery’s history. In 2017, Galeria Studio hosted part of the 9th edition of the Warsaw Under Construction festival, organised by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, which focused on the past and present of Plac Defilad. Today, in reference to that event, we give the floor to one artist, Tomasz Szerszeń, to recount his own story of confronting this extraordinary space.
Here is what the artist says about the exhibition:
Between 2019 and 2024, the balcony and windows of Galeria Studio were my vantage points for observation of the everchanging Plac Centralny — the pace of my visits determined by the constraints of the pandemic. Gazing from the windows towards the Museum of Modern Art building under construction prompts questions about the relationship to neighbouring institutions and their future coexistence, about the developing urban landscape (“changes faster … than a mortal’s heart”), but also about the identity of the gallery itself. The project is also an attempt at visual archaeology, in which the analogue, black and white record reveals successive layers of time and meaning accumulated at this central point or, for a change, confronts a certain aporia of visibility. Finally, it is also an attempt to reflect on the limitations of photography itself and our gaze — framed by monumental architecture, which “allows” one to see some things but “hides” others. As with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, the reality behind the window appears to be a riddle and the more we analyse it, the more fascinating it becomes.
Curator: Maria Prokesz
Production: Monika Balińska
English text editing: Daniel Malone
Graphic design: KUKI Krzysztof Iwański
PR: Marta Sputowska, Majka Duczyńska
Partner: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw