This time, Archeology of Photography Foundation has invited CENTRALA Designers’ Task Force to cooperation within the ‘Live Archives’ project. On a daily basis the group members – Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis – are involved in working on architectural and art projects, deriving their inspiration from 20th century avant-garde. From the perspective of researchers, designers and re-constructors of historical exhibitions they have taken a closer look at the archives of an exhibitioner, graphic designer and photographer, Wojciech Zamecznik. Within the exhibition in 20 Chłodna Street they present how modern his thought and approach towards exhibitions were already in 1960’s as well as how Zamecznik’s projects resonate with their own concepts related to art of designing and influencing the space – be it a public space, gallery interiors or displays.
For the purpose of the project they created architectural solutions, addressing the ideas realized on the exhibition ‘The Age of Enlightenment in Poland’ from 1952, designed by Zamecznik and Maurycy Stryjecki. In the space arranged this way, Kuciewicz and De Iacobis speak about the essential elements of constructing exhibitions – about the choreographic dimension of space, artistic announcement photographic frieze, etalage and spatial relief.
To depict and exemplify these ideas they have chosen projects, models and drafts from Wojciech Zamecznik’s archives, i.a. the designs of Coal Pavilion from 1948 or displays from the International Expo in Milan from 1958.
They describe their experience of working on the ‘Field of Vision’ this way:
‘Analysing the archival materials associated with exhibition designs authored by Wojciech Zamecznik – realised individually or with his collaborators – we can distinguish the entire spectrum of spatial and art solutions which aimed at intensifying the ‘experience’ of visiting the exhibition. Zamecznik’s exhibition design workshop experimented with the features of particular space, balancing its informative and aesthetic functions. By multiplying means of artistic expression, which an exhibition ‘attacked’ its viewers with, he tried to influence and broaden the perception capabilities of the visitors. Zamecznik, his contemporaries alike, each time cared to achieve a different sort of impressions or different character of the entirety. ‘Field of Vision’ was broadened thanks to the three-dimensionality of the applied solutions as well as combining graphics, photography and painting, and turning them into altering entirety/entirety experienced through ‘movement’ – when a spectator shifts around, and not – as it often happens today – via the motion of multimedia. Nowadays we are able to figure out the ‘storyline’ of this experience. To reconstruct the subsequent relations: spectator-object, object-design, and first and foremost the relation on the line: spectator-spectator. The latter one might be observed in some of the preserved photographs, showing visitors as a counterpart of the composition, an element in motion. Juxtaposition of the archival black and white photographs with colour designs gives a lot of joy. Presented together, they allow to reconstruct the exhibitions in mind the way Zamecznik designed them and the audience experienced – in colour. We are presenting our interpretations of ‘the grammar of exhibitions’, which we have also learnt by the encounter with this archive, as well as our subjective associations and terms, which – we believe – are worth reclaiming’.
FIELD OF VISION. CENTRALA Designers’ Task Force/ Wojciech Zamecznik
Exhibition opening: 19th April 2018, 7 p.m.
20th April – 27th May 2018
Opening hours: Monday – Sunday; 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Archeology of Photography Foundation
Chłodna 20, Warsaw
faf.org.pl
Photo: W. Zamecznik, Polish Pavilion ‘Metalexport’ Exhibition on the International Expo, exhibition designers: W. Zamecznik, Milan, 1959© J. i S. Zamecznik / FAF
The exhibition is co-financed by The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
The exhibition is co-financed by the City of Warsaw.
