Breakthrough

 

Breakthrough is the new Exhibition of Contemporary Art Center in Torun dedicated to polish architecture after 1989. The exhibition, which shows Architektura-Murator’s Collection, starts today and it is open to public till 22.11.2015. The collection include Scientific Information Centre and Academic Library – CINiBA in Katowice.

 

Centre of Contemporary Art, Torun, 17.09 – 22.11.2015

opening: 17th September, Thursday, 19:00
curators: Marta Kołacz, Cezary Lisowski
idea of the collection: Tomasz Fudala, Ewa P. Porębska

 

In September, the Centre of Contemporary Art “Znaki Czasu” in Toruń is staging an exhibition of the collection of scale models “Architektura-murator” for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, featuring the most important buildings erected in Poland after 1989.

In 2014, twenty-five scale models representing the best Polish buildings of the last 25 years were constructed to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Architektura-murator – the leading magazine devoted to contemporary architecture in Poland. Having been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the models were added to the collection of the museum. They constitute a unique set on the national scale.

Describing the realizations contained in the Warsaw collection as “breakthrough” achievements of Polish architecture, the exhibition emphasizes the significant position of architecture in the transformation of political system. Represented buildings frequently caused changes in the approach to architecture in Poland, they set new trends, stood out from the rest and became records of the dynamics of history.

The eponymous “breakthrough” can be identified with the year 1989 which brought radical political and economic changes in Poland and opened up new opportunities for Polish architecture. In the last 25 years, in a world ruled by free market, numerous private architecture studios appeared and, as time went by, gained recognition. Private patronage returned and the Polish market opened for foreign investors, more and more companies decided to erect new stately seats. European funds made it easier to complete constructions dedicated to sport or culture. International contests were increasingly popular, resulting – for the first time in a long time – in foreign architecture studios realizing their projects in Poland. All this clearly shows that what we could observe in the last quarter of the century was an architectural breakthrough.

The very fact that architectural models have been included in the collection of a museum can be seen as a breakthrough; they were thus conferred the status of works of art worthy of being displayed by institutions devoted to contemporary art. This means that our perception of architecture has become more conscious and we are willing to recognize it as one of the important fields of contemporary culture.

The majority of the scale models were made especially for the anniversary collection of Architektura-murator with the help (design and financing) of specific architects and studios, which ensured – as the idea of the collection required – individual expression of the most important features of the presented constructions as well as recognition of the scale models as sculptures, models or expression of designing processes.  Ewa P. Porębska, the initiator of the collection, claims that this makes the phenomenon of developing an idea and realizing outstanding architecture more accessible.

Buildings were selected jointly by the team of the Architecture-murator monthly and the Museum of Modern Art. Each model in the collection is described in detail and the construction it stands for is analyzed within the context of Polish contemporary architecture.

more at: www.csw.torun.pl