Composing the Space. Sculptures in the Avant-garde

Composing the Space. Sculptures in the Avant-garde is a temporary exhibition project for MS2 Museum of Art in Łódź, Poland.

Following the experiments of the avant-garde sculptors, this exhibition examine the behind-the-scenes findings and consequences of the fascinating modernist discoveries regarding the relationship between space, movement and body. Our guide here is Katarzyna Kobro herself and her artworks which are shown against the works of her contemporaries, such as: Naum Gabo, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Antoine Pevsner, Jean Arp, Alexander Archipenko, and Julio Gonzales. Above all, we ask a question about how artists, while experimenting with the materiality and plasticity of time, space and dynamics of the rhythms of the human body, reflect the complexity of the experience of modernity. We also analyse what exactly characterised their search for new relations between abstract form and movement, as well as what visions of the relationship of man with the environment they proposed. Following the ideas of creators who want to break free from identifying a sculpture piece with a solid and a closed form alone, the exhibition problematise the issue of the movement of receivers of art. It is accompanied by performative tours encouraging viewers to look again at the ways in which they engage their body and senses in the reception of the composition of the exhibition and the works exhibited there. Artists: Aleksandr Archipenko, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Barbara Hepworth, Maria Jarema, Katarzyna Kobro, Henri Laurens, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Zdeněk Pešánek, Antoine Pevsner, Aleksandr Rodczenko, Teodor Roszak, Władysław Strzemiński, Mieczysław Szczuka, Władimir Tatlin, Georges Vantongerloo, Henryk Wiciński, Ossip Zadkine, August Zamoyski