The exhibition is presented in two spaces. The gallery on the first floor features works from the 1980s and 1990s, with the largest selection of Kurze Biura and the documentation of the situationist actions by Office of Art and Culture Guides. The gallery on the second floor showcases public space activities from the last two decades, including pro-ecological projects related to fishing.
A number of works by Andrzej Paruzel “happen” at the level/surface of language. At the same time, the artist creates fictional situations and stories, characterized by a poetic accessibility of titles and “literary ear”. Apparently deprived of practical use, homonyms, polysemies or alliterations resemble a surrealist manner. They lack the “fundamental” thread, a logical reason for the sequence of events. Office of Art and Culture Guides is a special project. “The Office is my pen” – proclaims Paruzel. Full of autobiographical references, the activities fit into a number of para-institutions founded by independent artists in opposition against the official culture of the People’s Republic of Poland. Nowadays, we are coming back to independent ways of art production and circulation, we declare the need for post-institutions, unrestricted by self-censorship or any rules in the changing world and art.
Paruzel’s latest works reference his own biography. He is the son of Marian Paruzel, a pioneer of sea trout fishing in Poland, who, as a student of architecture in Szczecin, took his first steps in fishing on the Pomeranian rivers. Andrzej Paruzel has recently devoted his attention to promoting and proposing a number of “pro/ecological” activities in fishing. At the exhibition, the author not only presents his works focused on the fight against salmonids’ poaching in Pomerania /emphasizing the complexity of the problem/, but goes further to raise the question about the sense of modern fishing. He proposes the necessary angler’s presence – as NATURE GUARD – at the water bank and calls for replacing fishing with being in nature.
The author dedicates the exhibition to his father and dr Ewa Mikina, with whom he collaborated. Similarly to Paruzel, she was born in 1951 in Pogodno, Szczecin.
The exhibition has been produced with the support from ZAiKS.
