THE SMOOTH SURFACE OF PREFABRICATED MATERIALS
In 2015, Barbara Kubska became involved in the process of digitizing the negatives left behind by her grandfather, Zygmunt Kubski, who documented the creation of the “new city” of Tychy between 1954 and 1989. The artist’s gaze met that of her grandfather from decades earlier. She saw the city through the lens of the Polish People’s Republic. At the same time raised during a political upheaval, she realized her own history lacked an anchor in the history of that period. Why was it considered a story unworthy of telling?
Over four thousand negatives of Zygmunt Kubski (1921-2008) held in the collection of the City Museum of Tychy, depict the construction of a model socialist city second only to Nowa Huta. A unique collection of photographs documents the implementation of new technologies, the mechanization of construction, and the designs of important architects, such as Ewa and Marek Dziekoński, associated with the Wrocław University of Science and Technology (designers of the Racławice Panorama complex), as well as Maria and Andrzej Czyżewski.
Over the years, the artist became intrigued by the tensions between the materiality of the archive and the fleeting meanings of the images, between the physicality of the city and utopian notions of it, between the supposed objectivity of photography and of propaganda.
The exhibition “The Smooth Surface of Prefabricated Materials. The Archives of Zygmunt Kubski” juxtaposes selected objects, installations, and photographs from the series “How Distant, How Close” (2025) and “Time Not Lost” Czas nieutracony (2022) with her latest projects. The artist extracts photographs from museum settings. She frames them, combines them with other images, and shifts the emphasis. Kubska challenges the validity of viewing archives solely in terms of urban and architectural documentation. She constructs potential narratives and demonstrates that archives can be an unlimited space for social imagination.
Ewelina Lasota
curator
Organizers:
FOTO-GEN Gallery
Muzeum Miejskie w Tychach
Curator collaboration:
Paweł Bąkowski / FOTO-GEN Gallery
Ewelina Lasota / City Museum of Tychy
Media patrons:
Kwartalnik Fotografia, Pismo Artystyczne Format
Profreading:
Monika Wójtowicz
Translations:
Christa Conklin
Co-financed by the budget of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship Self-Government
Barbara Kubska – visual artist, lecturer. Author of exhibitions and artistic projects carried out individually and collectively. She uses photography, creates intermedia projects, and works with photographic archives. She explores issues related to memory through the prism of cultural change. In her doctoral thesis ‘Archive and Conflict: On the Search for Identity in Photographic Collections,’ she examined contemporary perceptions of Zygmunt Kubski’s photo archive. She uses methods drawn from autoethnography, working in the spirit of artistic research.