ART WORK

Since the 20th century, a contemporary artist has a reputation of a liberal system trickster – a person who managed to win the right to a relative freedom from the need to participate in the public labor. In a sense, a contemporary artist can be defined as a person who has no fixed work schedule. But this does not mean that artists work less than other society members. What are the specific features of the artwork? What place in this system of work occupy persons, who are not direct producers of artistic objects, but who ensure the existence of an infrastructure of contemporary art such as curators, critics, art historians, gallery girls, etc.?

I wanted to talk about work and play with the language – being both serious and to wink at the viewer. The conception of “Art Work” is based on the multiple meaning of the word. Work – is it something that we just do all day? Is it what brings us income? Is it an outcome of some better or worse organised set of actions? Art Work is a starting point to have a closer look at artist’s work, the mechanisms of functioning on the art market, the way he and his works are perceived by the audience.

We decided to combine Polish and Ukrainian art, because we found a lot of common issues when it comes to artist’s work and life. I was discussing the problems of the art market in Poland and Ukraine with Alisa Loshkina since 2014, when I first came to Kiev to research on Ukrainian art. The concept developed since that time from very serious, to more playful. I didn’t only want the viewer to be overwhelmed by the amount of problems art world is experiencing all the time. I wanted him to get closer to the artist and his work, to understand him and maybe to like him a bit.