This week, I spent time at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kraków (MOCAK). It’s situated in the Jewish Ghetto quarter, next door to Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, which I plan to visit another day. It’s a lively, interesting area near the Vistula River.
The museum opened in 2011 in an “avant-garde” building designed by Italian architect Claudio Nardi. It has a modern layout with a collection of permanent and temporary works by Polish and foreign artists.
The current temporary exhibition entitled, “Try to Make It Real. But Compared to What?” features “important trends and figures in contemporary Lithuanian art of the last 30 years”. The exhibition consists of installations, video films, sculptures, paintings, photography, and other objects. It’s dedicated to the 700th anniversary of the city of Vilnius – the historic capital of Lithuania. The museum also includes a library with works on art theory and history.
In this post, I’ve presented photos from the gallery, rather than details about the artists and descriptions of their creations. You can see the effect of war and communism in their art. I tried to match the works with the artist names, so you can research them, if you like. There are links below.
Contemporary Lithuanian Art
The title of the Lithuanian exhibition is borrowed from the anti-war protest song “Compared to What” written in 1969 by Gene McDaniels. The exhibition “reveals the relationship of 25 artists with reality – using irony, sincerity, and play, to rethink painful experiences”. It focuses on Lithuania’s “resistance and the Soviet past, identity problems during the first years of independence, feminist comments, and ironic retorts from the media”. All of the artists are new to me, as were the renowned individuals and dignitaries depicted in some of their works.
Live Factory 2
A popular permanent exhibit is an interactive installation by Krystian Lupa, Polish theatre director and set designer. His work – “Live Factory 2” – was inspired by Andy Warhol’s NYC studio.
Galeria Kazimierz
It was an interesting day that ended at a large shopping mall – Galeria Kazimierz – across the river, about a ten-minute walk from my apartment. There were a few things I needed that weren’t available in Old Town or smaller local shops a few feet from my apartment. Visiting the mall was also interesting, and I always enjoy walking across Kraków’s footbridges.
Lithuanian Art of the Last 30 Years
“Lithuanian contemporary art is constantly facing a paradox. The generation of artists at the beginning of independence grew up in one social paradigm, but began to create and live in a completely different one. The artists used paradox as a survival strategy, since the reality around them became wild, unmanageable, unmodelable, and often completely incomprehensible to the rational mind.” Dr. J. Ludavičienė, Curator
This is a list with links of some of the artists whose works are on display at MOCAK:
- Eglė Rakauskaitė
- Beata Stankiewicz
- Paweł Książek
- Krystian Lupa
- Pola Dwurnik
- Edward Dwurnik
- Malgorzata Blamowska
- Rafal Bujnowski
- Bartex Materka
- Marcin Maciejowski
- Agata Kus
- Agnieszki Osieckiej
- Krištof Kintera
- Stanisław Dróżdż
- Julian Opie
- Štefan Papčo
- Alpin Arda Bağcık
- Deborah Sengl
- Hans Op De Beeck
- Alina Melnikova
- Bruno Schultz
- Žilvinos Kempinas
- Lina Lapelytė
- Gediminas Urbons
- Julijons Urbons
- Donatas Jankauskas
There are many more museums and art galleries to explore in Kraków!