FRIEND OF A FRIEND

In the 2nd edition of the Friend of a Friend project, Galeria Raster invites you to an encoun­ter of three artists from three con­tinents: Flo Kasearu from Estonia, Sachiko  Kazama from Japan, and Michelle Raw­lings from the United States. Each of them works in a dif­ferent medium and cul­tural con­text, employing an individual, expres­sive lan­guage. In varying ways, all of them negotiate the social and political dimen­sions of artistic work.

Rafał Bujnowski, Peter Puklus, Zofia Rydet
1000 HANDS

Metaphorically and seasonally, the exhibition 1000 Hands suits the climate of the pre-​spring thaw, illuminating a land­scape of exhaustion and approaching, intuitively sensed change. In Polish literature this metaphor car­ries a political dimen­sion. In the works shown together here by Rafał Buj­now­ski (1974–), Peter Puklus (1980–) and Zofia Rydet (1911–1997), what is vital is the very process of trans­for­mation, and the accom­panying ambivalence, the tem­perature of inter­per­sonal relations and the poten­tial of the human hands from the title.

Karolina Jabłońska
SLIPPERY

“Slippery” at Raster is Karolina Jabłońska’s first individual show in Warsaw. In her pain­tings girls wear rings and guys wear wat­ches, but the stereo­typical logic of dominance is rever­sed. The heroines here are idols, sooth­sayers and thieves, and relation­ships and pas­sions explode as violen­tly as they end, in emotion. Here exag­geration and hyper­bole are the rule for both com­position and life.

Rafał Bujnowski, Michelle Rawlings
FORMY

Joint exhibition of Rafał Buj­now­ski and Michelle Raw­lings is organized by Raster in Tokyo’s Shibuya Hikarie

NADA Miami

Raster at NADA Miami: Rafał Buj­now­ski, Zbigniew Rogal­ski, Slavs and Tatars. Booth #2.04/3.03

If I Were the Moon

The post-​romantic figure of the drun­ken artist is fading into the past, leaving behind a land­scape lit­tered with hal­lucinations, depravity, and shat­tered illusions. This is the story of the intimate ties between con­tem­porary art and vodka. Con­ceived as a medley of artworks and documen­tary con­tent, the exhibition features Krzysztof M. Bed­nar­ski, Olaf Brzeski, Michał Budny, Rafał Buj­now­ski, Oskar Dawicki, Edward Dwur­nik, Władysław Hasior, Jerzy Lewczyński, Honorata Martin, Dominika Olszowy, Zbigniew Rogal­ski, Wil­helm Sasnal, and others.

CONDO UNIT

Raster is among nine renow­ned gal­leries from Europe and Middle East to take part in the Condo Unit show in Athens.

ORNO. Luźne wątki

W ramach kolej­nej odsłony cyklu ORNO, dedykowanego spółdzielni jubiler­skiej, która przez kilkadziesiąt lat użytkowała lokal przy Wspólnej 63 – obecną siedzibę Rastra – prezen­tujemy prace współczesnych artystów wykorzystujące tkaninę – materię ściśle związaną z tzw. sztuką użytkową.

COSMOSCOW

Raster at COSMOSCOW fair in Moscow: Rafał Buj­now­ski, Prze­mek Matecki, Slavs and Tatars

Nobuyoshi Araki, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Eva Koťátková
FOREIGN BODIES

Contemporary visual cul­ture treats the body as a plastic material that can be formed, shaped, distor­ted and defor­med as needed or desired. The images gathered for our exhibition are a special col­lec­tion of such bodies sub­jec­ted to various treat­ments and forms of sub­duing and con­trol­ling the body.
The cosmetic masks photographed by Grzeszykow­ska effec­tively reshape the artist’s face. The school les­sons in anatomy in Koťátková’s col­lages results in decon­struc­tion of the holistic unity of body and psyche. Araki’s nudes fran­kly address sexual prac­tices groun­ded in domination.

LISTE

Raster at LISTE in Basel: Oskar Dawicki, Honorata Martin, Slavs and Tatars

Tbilisi Art Fair

Raster at Tbilisi Art Fair: Olaf Brzeski, Prze­mek Matecki, Zofia Rydet, Slavs and Tatars.

Friend of a Friend

“Friend of a Friend” is a con­cept based on the prin­ciple of frien­dly col­laboration between con­tem­porary art gal­leries. It puts together Warsaw-​based spaces as hosts with inter­national guests, and thus aims to establish an alter­native plat­form for com­mer­cial gal­leries to present con­tem­porary art. The group exhibition prepared at Raster will inc­lude works by Breyer P-Orridge (1950, UK) from Zurich’s Galerie Bern­hard, Andrea Kvas (1986, IT) and Nick Bastis (1985, US) from Vienna’s Ermes-​Ermes gal­lery, as well as Olaf Brzeski. 

Przemek Matecki
SMALL PAINTINGS

In his latest series of pain­tings, which he worked on non­stop for the past year or more, Matecki takes on the vast­ness of art. A tan­gible symbol of its fecun­dity is the heavy piles of super­fluous exhibition catalogs and art magazines which the artist brow­ses through in search of inspiring material for his own work. Matecki gives new life to reproduc­tions, trans­for­ming them into sharp, witty miniature oil pain­tings. The treat­ments he applies generate sur­prising effects. Here art is sub­mit­ted to an authorial com­pres­sion and regains its vigor. Often with a single gesture, Matecki extracts the essence from the work of other artists and creates entirely new pain­tings exuding energy and humor, a kind of con­tem­porary, masterly capriccio.

Oskar Dawicki
MARY

Oskar Dawicki, a literary and film figure, an artist known as a prac­titioner of total per­for­mance, presents this time a dys­topian nar­rative: a kind of script, or more precisely a recon­struc­tion, of a per­for­mance originally direc­ted in a dream. The cen­tral figure in his vision is a pregnant woman, the heroine of our times, nourisher of the unborn but also caretaker of the dead. As befits a doub­ting artist, the world of his creation is full of ambivalence.

NADA Miami

Raster at NADA Miami: Rafał Buj­now­ski, Aneta Grzeszykow­ska, Prze­mek Matecki, Michelle Raw­lings, Mika Tajima. Booth #3.07

Mika Tajima
AIR

Sourced from the mul­tiple architec­tonic and tech­nological realities that exist in Warsaw, the sub­jects of Tajima’s exhibition—machine, book, and body—are unseen. Instead they provide the under­lying tech­nical material for the hardware-​laden sculp­tures and abs­tract woven textiles in AIR. Together the objects intimate a still obstinate and unreadable body in trans­for­mation. Skin per­forated. Mind laced. Input ready. Con­figured for performance—work, pleasure, war. Not yet fully machine.

The exhibition at Raster will be the first individual show of the artist’s works in this part of Europe, premiering Sep­tem­ber 2017 as part of Warsaw Gal­lery Weekend.

Krzysztof Pruszkowski
Barrier

In 1977, Krzysz­tof Prusz­kow­ski, a Polish-​born photographer residing in France today, was not yet a legal resident. As a man without a coun­try, he began a project that bore the stark, Polish title Barierka (Bar­rier). Over several months, he produced a few hun­dred black-and-white photographs depic­ting the streets of Paris, cut off at various angles by the metal bloc­kades residents have come to know so well. The exhibition of photographs and album reveal a series of images as in a silent film, with only one hero – barierka in the title role.

viennacontemporary

Raster at vien­nacon­tem­porary fair in Vienna

COSMOSCOW

Raster at COSMOSCOW fair in Moscow: Rafał Buj­now­ski, Karolina Jabłońska, Zbigniew Libera, Janek Simon, Slavs and Tatars