The artist as curator and collector. About exhibitions by Wlodzimierz Borowski and Robert Kusmirowski

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of two exhibitions – Wlodzimierz Borowski’s “I Pokaz Synkretyczny” (1st Syncretic Show, BWA, Lublin 1966) and Robert Kusmirowski’s “Masyw kolekcjonerski. Ze zbiorow Roberta Kusmirowskiego i rodziny Sosenkow” (Collecting Massif. From the collection of Robert Kusmirowski and the Sosenko family, Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków 2009). These exhibitions were shown in the context of changing exhibition practices in the 1960s and early 21st century. The time-distant presentations were discussed as the effect of similar artistic strategies that led to treating the art show as a medium in its own right, subject to self-reflection. By replacing creativity with the arrangement of original works and ready-made objects in different circumstances, the artists destabilised the figure of the artist-curator and artist-collector. Borowski’s realisations led to a reinterpretation of the “organicist” and vitalist metaphors of creativity, Kusmirowski located his “Massif...” as a symbol of petrification and catastrophe of contemporary culture. The confrontation of the two exhibitions makes it possible to observe, within varying historical and cultural parameters, the concept of the exhibition as a tool for deconstructing ideas of modernity based on technical expediency and progress, and postmodern historicism and reconstruction of the past.