8.11-15.12.2024

VILLA POLONEZ

The latest Polish photography goes to Paris

This year, for the first time, together with the Polish Institute in Paris and thanks to the support of Photo Days and Contemporary Lynx, we are pleased to invite you to Villa Polonez – an exhibition of 11 Polish artists curated by Paweł Bąkowski.

The place and time of the exhibition are unique due to the Paris Photo Fair starting in a few days, a great celebration of photography, during which you can interact with artists from all over the world, take part in meetings and exhibitions, as well as get to know the best publications devoted to this genre. Among this group, the exhibition we are preparing, which is an event accompanying Paris Photo, will present the latest Polish photography, and will be attended by:

Jacek Fota, Weronika Gęsicka, Hubert Humka,
kinoMANUAL / Aga Jarząb i Maciek Bączyk, Julia Klewaniec,
Michał Łuczak, Anna Orłowska, Monika Orpik,
Witek Orski, Michał Sita, Ada Zielińska.

Today, old villas, monumental palaces and modernist structures are often undergoing deep transformations, both physical and metaphorical. These buildings and spaces, which once had high aesthetic and historic value or embodied totalitarian ideologies, often lose their meaning, turning into a symbol of erosion, deformation and oblivion. The works presented in this exhibition explore them, to not only document the change but reflect on its inevitability as well. What also features very strongly are fortresses and ramparts, which today no longer fulfill their primary function and instead become historical monuments. However, symbolically, they keep being erected to preserve the familiar order and a sense of identitarian security. In many cases, they turn into a caricature in which the past becomes a fantasy of imaginary power.

The theme of the polonaise evokes a dialogue between the past and the present, in which the past is not merely a collection of memories or aesthetic values. It is a heritage, which, in our transforming world, needs to be reinterpreted and understood. What is heritage today? What is its importance in the context of rapid social, political and architectural changes? This exhibition invites the viewer to reflect upon these issues, emphasizing that the notion of heritage cannot be summarized as simple nostalgia – since it also involves an active process of interpretation, which shapes us and our ever-shifting world.

Hence ‘Villa Polonez’ is not only an exhibition but a deep meditation on transience and continuity. The polonaise, with its rhythm and alternating steps, mirrors the incessant continuity of history, in which the past and the present intertwine, creating one, common narrative. The dance is full of stumbles and falls and the villa, in which it is performed – of dark nooks and crannies. ‘Villa Polonez’ is an invitation to dance with history, whereby each step, not always confident, reveals an aspect of ourselves. It reminds us that what matters is not perfection but the motion itself.