Łódź / Signum Foundation Gallery
30 VII 2015 – 10 X 2015

EDWARD KRASIŃSKI “BLUE LINE”

Exhibitions

The exhibition “The Blue Line” refers to the most conceptual yet romantic gesture made by an artist in 1968 in Zalesie. The blue line of a scotch tape, without a beginning or an end, became Edward Krasinski’s signature, defining his artistic identity.

 

A spontaneous gesture done out in the open air defined Krasinski’s artistic processes to such an extend, that blue became the only colour the artist ever used in his paintings and performances. In 1969 in Foksal Gallery he carried out a dynamic installation “J’ai perdu la fin”, in which he was tangled in a blue wire searching in vain for its end. The installation was documented in Eustachy Kossakowski’s photographs.

 

In the following year the artist created the “Zyg- Zag” (“Zig-Zag”) sculpture, which is displayed in the exhibition accompanied by the photographs by Eustachy Kossakowski depicting another one of Krasinski’s dynamic installations, “Interwencja 4” (“Intervention 4).

 

Artist’s presence is evoked in the exhibition by a film by Malgorzata Potocka, “Three Interiors” (1982), where the artist introduces his blue line into an imagined gallery space.

 

The exhibition is also accompanied by a text by Maria Morzych, “A line to be lived in”.

 

Curated by: Grzegorz Musial

 

Edward Krasinski (1925-2004), painter, sculptor, author of spatial forms, artistic installations and happenings documented among others by Eustache Kossakowski. one of the most important protagonists of the Polish neo-avant-garde from the 1960s and ’70s. Associated with Foksal Gallery from 1966.

The works of Edward Krasiński are in the collections of, among others, The Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, the National Museum in Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław, the Museum of Art in Łódź, the National Gallery in Prague and Museum of Modern Art in New York.

 

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

1965 – Edward Krasiński, Krzysztofory Gallery, Kraków, Poland

1968 – Edward Krasiński, Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Poland

1974 – Edward Krasiński, Repassage Gallery, Warsaw, Poland

1975 – Edward Krasiński, Gallery 28, Paris, France

1980 – Urban action near ‘Gruba Kaśka’ restaurant, Warsaw, Poland

1985, 1986, 1987 – Edward Krasiński, Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Poland

1989 – Edward Krasiński. In the memory of Henryk Stażewski, Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Poland

1991 – Edward Krasiński, Museum of Art, Łódź, Poland

1993 – Around the person and works of Edward Krasiński, Public Library, Legionowo, Poland

1994 – My daughter’s home and me, The Old Gallery, Lublin, Poland

1995 – Edward Krasiński. Finally in Łucku, Lubart Castle, Łuck, Ukraine

1996 – Edward Krasiński, Kunsthalle Basel, Basilea, Switzerland

1997 – Edward Krasiński, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland

1998 – Edward Krasiński, Arsenał Gallery, Białystok, Poland

2001 – Edward Krasiński, Klosterfelde Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2003 – Edward Krasiński, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, USA

2004 – Infinity of the Line. Hommage à Edward Krasiński, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Łódź

2006 – Edward Krasiński. Les mises en scène, Generali Foundation, Vienna

2008 – ABC, The Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art, Kraków

2013 – B, Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw

2013 – Labyrinth, Starmach Galery, Kraków

2016-2017 – Edward Krasiński, Tate Gallery, Liverpool

2010 ‐ Edward Krasiński and Eustachy Kossakowski, J’ai perdu la fin, Broadway 1602, New York

 

 

“The line to live in”

 

Edward Krasinski asked himself which way is it: does the line lead him, or does he lead the line.

 

Certainly the blue line can be everywhere; inside and outside of a gallery, on the windows, in a photogrpaph, on a wall of a bar in the streets. And in a flat. It is infinite. 

 

It had become Krasinski’s signature and a mobile shelter. 

 

And it all began in a forest near Warsaw, where the sticky tape run through the trees, then people (a young daughter included), appliances; it would come out of a bottle, be wrapped around a finger, flow from a tap, a phone, music score; it even once was a zig-zag on the floor.

 

In silence and with his back facing us, the artist swiftly creates the environment, a totally original surrounding; he doesn’t measure or check anything. For a brief moment he stops, only to continue to lead the blue line into another space.

 

He leaves it to the others and moves on.

 

He asks about it’s end upon announcing, that he lost it – J’ai perdu la fin!

 

With no manifesto, no slogans. The only remark Krasinski makes is that “normaly we don’t take notice of a wall, until a fly rests on it. And so it is the same with the blue line, which is the reason we begin to notice the environment – the space of an art gallery, a flat, an atelier.

 

Already in the sixties Julian Przybos had predicted Krasinski’s fate upon seeing his aerial sculpture (“Spear”). He said that Krasinski will not be satisfied by an open space or a traditional enclosed cube, as he has reduced sculpture to a line.

 

in 2015 in Signum Project Gallery (Lodz, Poland) the performative aspect of Krasinski’s art allows for a dynamic perception of the surrounding, with the zig-zag on the floor.

The line runs on the surface of the paintings known as “Interventions”, emphasising the artworks spacial qualities. The blue line marks twenty drawings from A to B and then passes through the last notable point.

 

Contemporary reception of the Living art of the sixties and seventies, art of the giants such as Edward Krasiński , Stano Filko , Józef Robakowski , Goran Trbulja is a description of how the artists have tapped their freedom. Modestly avoiding rules and principles, they managed to duck out from all social norms and political systems.

 

The blue line became Krasinski’s bypass of all theories, practices and overlaps of the status of artworks, art itself and reality.

 

Maria Morzuch