MUSIC
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Off Festival, Katowice |
Recently, Poland has seen an explosion of music festivals – from big pop and rock events to ambitious alternative and contemporary music showcases
Jacek Skolimowski
Music journalist, radio host and DJ recommends the best music festivals for every ear and every pair of feet
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Heineken Open’er Festival Gdynia, beginning of July For almost ten years it has been promoting the biggest and most important mainstream acts from all over the world – from the Chemical Brothers and Massive Attack, to Coldplay, Kings Of Leon and Arctic Monkeys. Off Festival Katowice, beginning of August More focused on presenting alternative music and discovering promising artists from the independent scene. The person responsible for the line-up is Artur Rojek from the popular Polish rock band Myslovitz. If the Open’er Festival is like Poland’s Glastonbury, then the Off Festival is more like Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, a place to discover budding talent. Unsound Festival Kraków, October Fans of electronic music will certainly appreciate the ambitious festival. It started seven years ago as a small event mostly for German, |
Australian and Polish experimental artists. And now it’s one of the best events in Europe for all the new genres like dubstep, radical like noise and demanding like neo-classical. Audioriver Płock, Summer For the fans of more dance beats there’s a really nice event called Audioriver – every summer on a beach by the Wisła in Płock. It’s the best place for all night parties with the best djs and live acts playing everything from techno, drum’n’bass, breakbeat, house, electro and minimal. Burn Selector Festival Kraków, June Completely new thing on the festival map is, organized for the third time in 2011, with a more and more ambitious line-up. Old vs. New Poland has also its own rich tradition of festivals like Jazz Jamboree or the contemporary music showcase Warsaw Autumn, both over 50 years old. They still enjoy much attention |
and certainly a great deal of respect, but have to compete with younger events. For the jazz music it’s Warsaw Summer Jazz Days and for contemporary music it’s Sacrum Profanum in Krakow. Even the legendary Jarocin festival, which in the eighties was a place, where Polish punkrock was born, has to compete. Przystanek Woodstock, a completely free event organised in Kostrzyn, right by the Polish-German border, draws up to even by 400,000 – 500,000 people each year. Warsaw To get in touch with the most interesting independent Polish music, simply visit Warsaw anytime, the largest and most diverse centre of musical innovation. Of special note is the label Lado ABC, which has been growing for ten years now. The protagonist here is Macio Moretti, leader of the band Mitch&Mitch, which started as a spoof country combo, but now comes up with exquisitely arranged style-surfing pieces. Moretti also plays drums in the wacky jazz group Baaba and the project ParisTetris, where he is joined by the pianist Marcin Masecki and the Argentinianborn singer Candelaria Saenz. |
VISUAL ARTS
The Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw
The past twenty years in Poland have been a period of great political and social transformation, as well as a time for the expansion of art spaces – new public and private collections have been created and new galleries opened. Furthermore, it has been a time of great international triumph for Polish artists. Nowadays, the art of Paweł Althamer, Mirosław Bałka, Michał Budny, Rafał Bujnowski, Tomasz Kowalski, Katarzyna Kozyra, Marcin Maciejowski, Wilhelm Sasnal, Monika Sosnowska, Jakub Julian Ziółkowski and Artur Żmijewski is recognised by curators, gallery owners and collectors worldwide. Private galleries, actively promoting Polish art around the world, have made the greatest contribution to the expansion of Polish art abroad. Still, the most recent Polish art is more than just the big names. Polish galleries, both public and private, showcase works of many young artists. These venues deserve a closer inspection
Piotr Bazylko, Krzysztof Masiewicz
Collectors and lovers of contemporary Polish art. They write a blog about the Polish art market called ArtBazaar
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WARSZAWA The Foksal Gallery Foundation ul. Górskiego 1A, www.fgf.com.pl They put Polish art onto the international stage. Aside from organising exhibitions, FGF often engages in projects in the public space. FGF is also the founder of Avant-Garde Institute in the former studio of the late artist Edward Krasiński. Czarna Gallery
ul. Marszałkowska 4 Located in a marvellously renovated second-floor flat of a midtown tenement house. Exceptional art projects by top artists from the youngest and middle generation make for a worthwhile visit. Kolonie
ul. Bracka 23 apt. 52, The youngest of Warsaw’s institutions comprises a gallery and a publishing house, Kolonie specialises in the latest trends in Polish contemporary art. Leto
ul. Hoża 9c, visits by appointment: One of Warsaw’s most dynamically growing galleries. This is where many famous debuts by artists from the youngest generation took place. Lokal_30
ul. Foksal 17b #30, Housed in a small apartment in an old tenement house by ul.Foksal in the very heart of Warsaw, the gallery debuted on the international art market at the 2006 Viennafair, where its presentation won the main award. Raster www.raster.art.pl Founded in 2001, the gallery immediately became a symbol of the new generation of both artists and collectors. |
Today, it is one of the most prominent Polish galleries, present at such prestigious fairs as Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach. Raster is also a venue for various performances and meetings with authors.
KRAKÓW Zderzak Gallery ul. Floriańska 3, www.zderzak.pl Founded in 1985, the gallery is one of the most important exhibition spaces on the Polish art market. Zderzak was the first to re-discover Andrzej Wroblewski, one of the most interesting Polish painters of the 20th century. It was here that the 1999 and 2000 debuts of Ładnie Group artists took place. Galeria ZPAF I S-ka ul. św. Tomasza 24, www.zpafiska.pl The gallery focuses on presenting and promoting photography as a medium of contemporary art and organises an annual photography festival (Photomonth). Starmach Gallery
ul. Węgierska 5, Located in a redecorated interior of a Jewish prayer house in the Podgorze district of Krakow, the gallery is run by Andrzej Starmach, who specialises in contemporary Polish classics.
GDAŃSK Wyspa Institute of Art
ul. Doki 1/145 B, Founded in 2004 on the grounds of the legendary Gdańsk shipyard, the Institute became one of Poland’s leading cultural institutions. Wyspa is the first Polish non-profit institution with international outreach to be run by a non-governmental organisation dealing in contemporary art culture.
POZNAŃ Piekary Gallery
ul. Piekary 5, 1st floor, |
Presents the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, paying particular attention to avant-garde trends. Stereo Gallery
ul. Słowackiego 36/1, The youngest and most dynamic of Poznań’s galleries specialises in what is most recent in Polish art. The gallery serves as a space for individual and group exhibitions that convey the most captivating of the current trends in Polish art.
ŁÓDŹ Galeria Atlas Sztuki
ul. Piotrkowska 114/116, tue – fri: 4 – 8 pm, Atlas is a small private gallery whose exhibition program outrivals that of many public institutions. It is here that many exhibits and debuts important on the national scale have been held. The Poster Museum
ul. Stanisława Kostki-Potockiego 10/16, Warsaw, A small pavilion next to the Wilanow royal palace opened in 1968, when the Polish Poster School was already an internationally recognised phenomenon, as the first such institution in the world. The genre was born in the mid-fifties when the film industry and state propaganda machine started to commission artists to design posters for countless events and occasions. They were free to experiment with the form so long as the content was politically tame. The resulting posters still stun with innovative typography and witty metaphors. Each of the leading artists, such as Roman Cieślewicz, Henryk Tomaszewski, Jan Lenica, Jan Młodożeniec, Waldemar Świerzy, Wojciech Zamecznik, developed their trademark styles, ranging from expressive free-hand drawing to extremely minimalist. The spirit and quality live on in the young generation of Polish graphic designers presented at the museum, along with the best of international poster art, at the International Poster Biennale organised by the museum every other year. |
BOOKS
Warsaw’s Czuły Barbarzyńca (the Gentle Barbarian) was not the first bookshop-cum-café in Poland but certainly the one that defined the moment and started the craze that does not seem to end. You will find similar places in every respectable Polish city.
The three most prolific Polish writers around the world are poets: Tadeusz Różewicz (50 languages) and two Nobel Prize winners, Czesław Miłosz (45 languages) and Wisława Szymborska (41 languages). An interesting phenomenon is the unrelenting fascination with the works of Stanisław Lem – 90 of his books have been published in 42 languages, notwithstanding 76 different anthology contributions
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Stefan Chwin Hanemann, an erudite novel set in post-war Gdańsk, has been translated into Czech, English, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian. Michał Witkowski Best known for his witty gay novel Lubiewo translated into Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Russian, Swedish and Ukrainian. Wojciech Kuczok Novelist from Silesia loho, has won accolades for his frank account of a difficult father-son relationship. Gnój (Muck) has been translated into Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak and Ukrainian. Marek Krajewski Set a trend for crime novels full of periodic details. The first of Eberhardt Mock’s investigations Śmierć w Breslau (Death in Breslau), set in the pre-war German city of Wrocław has been translated into Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, Italian, Slovak, Spanish and Ukrainian. |
Paweł Huelle A Tricity author who has written a tale about a mysterious child set in Stalinist-era Gdańsk. Weiser Dawidek (Who Was David Weiser?) has been translated into: Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Hebrew, German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. Dorota Masłowska Novelist and playwright, has won the nation’s heart with her debut ‘chav novel’, Wojna polsko-ruska pod flagą biało-czerwoną (Snow White and Russian Red). Her inventive use of colloquial Polish has been more or less faithfully translated into Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Ukrainian. Olga Tokarczuk Novelist and essayist who chose to live in a small village in the Sudety mountains, where she perfects her own brand of magic al realism. Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times) has been translated into Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian. |
Andrzej Sapkowski The nation’s favourite fantasy writer. His cult novel Krew elfów (Blood of Elves) has been translated into Czech, English, French, German, Lithuanian, Russian and Spanish. Andrzej Stasiuk Carefully examines the history and culture of Central Europe in his reportage novel Jadąc do Babadag (On the Way to Babadag), translated into Albanian, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian and Ukrainian. Jacek Dehnel Poet and novelist known for his nostalgic eye for detail and a taste for elaborate vocabulary. His Lala (Dolly) has been translated into German, Hebrew, Hungarian Italian, Lithuanian, Slovak and Turkish. Antoni Libera Poland’s foremost expert on Samuel Beckett, author of aBildungsroman set in 1960s Warsaw. Madame has been translated into Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Turkish. |
