Language / Jezyk

Info

Kozłowski’s artist books play with logic and reduce language to its most basic elements.
Rather than using words or sentences, here in “Language’ the artist creates a game with letters of the Latin alphabet. Some combinations of letters spell recognizable words in English or Polish and perhaps other languages; others form simple letter combinations with no assigned meaning.
Foksal Gallery is indicated as the publisher of this text to confuse the censor. In fact, the book was self-published by Kozłowski and distributed as part of the NET project. 150 copies printed. Ref.2
Unnumbered.

- Jaroslaw Kozlowski (1945), is one of Poland’s leading conceptual artists. His work is often a critical analysis of language and logical structures. He has taught painting and drawing at the State Graduate School of Visual Arts, Poznan since 1967. In 1971, he initiated the NET program – an international artistic exchange. In 1972, he founded Akumulatory 2 Gallery in Poznan, which presented the work of Polish and international avant-garde artists until 1990 as an on-going project in opposition to the Communist regime under which he lived. At one point, the Communist government revoked his passport for what they considered his incendiary positions. Kozlowski is interested in the mechanisms of perception, self-reflection and the building of correlations between the grammar of the artistic language and the sphere of meaning. His work is in many international museums. The artist lives and works in Poznan, Poland. Ref.3

- Foksal Gallery Collection. In its first decade of operation, the cofounders of the Foksal Gallery openly questioned such concepts as “collection” and “museum.” The artists and critics associated with this avant-garde gallery founded in Warsaw in 1966 challenged the mechanisms of art institutions, such as the commercialization of conceptual practices and the building of hierarchies. In a key text for the operation of the Foksal Gallery, written by the founders in 1966 and titled “Introduction to the general theory of PLACE,” they phrased their demands as follows: “PLACE cannot be bought or collected. PLACE cannot be arrested. PLACE cannot be known.” Ref.4
- “Galeria Foksal” was the centre of one of the most important art circles of the second half of the 20th century. The gallery was founded in 1966 in Warsaw and co-created by art critics and artists with an interest in avant-garde art. It exhibited audiovisual installations, environments, and other forms of conceptual art which broke with the traditional forms of painting and sculpture. However, the artists involved in the gallery were first and foremost among the pioneers of action art and happening. Due to their innovative character, many of these activities are now considered to be one of the milestones of Polish modern art. Close cooperation between curators and artists meant that “Galeria Foksal” was also a research institution and was responsible for several theoretical manifestos.Ref.5

References

• Ref.1: culture.pl/en/place/foksal-gallery
• Ref.2: Penkararebooks
• Ref.3: artsy.net
• Ref.4: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
• Ref.5: cultural-opposition.eu