BEYOND TABOO IX. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE RICH - collective exhibition of artists associated with ArtBrut Gallery & Studio

Participating artists:
Mateusz Blaczek, Bartosz Dziedzic, Joanna Golachowska, Piotr Jeruzel, Aleksander Kienc, Agnieszka Kołodziejczyk, Jacek Kröle, Kamil Łyjak, Justyna Matusiak, Marta Nawojczyk, Andrzej Niedźwiecki, Jakub Plączkowski, Piotr Rymko, Wanda Sidorowicz, Daniel Stachowski, Marta Stańczyk, Krzysztof Tarnowski, Aleksandra Tsitini, Elwira Zacharska

Opening: Thursday 24 November 2022, 5:00 p.m.
The exhibition is open until the end of the year

ArtBrut Gallery
& Studio for Socio-Cultural Inclusions
Wrocław, 46A Ruska Street

Exibition Artistic Mentors: Dominika Łabądź and Jacek Zachodny
Producer: Miriam Pawlęga

BEYOND TABOO is a series of exhibitions that for the past nine years has presented projects and artworks of a group of artists associated with the ArtBrut Gallery & Studio. The artists take up sensitive personal issues related to emotions, dilemmas, feelings, corporeality and sensuality. Through difficult and non-obvious relationships with the outside world, they allude to the history of exclusion, the struggle to overcome stereotypes and various taboos still present in social reality, directly affecting their lives.

The exhibition BEYOND TABOO IX. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE RICH – is an attempt to transcend the negative nature of the contemporary world. It is based on moving our focus away from the catastrophe, emptiness, apocalypse, trauma, exclusion, victimisation.

This frequently overpowering negativity and sense of helplessness towards the uncontrollable processes of the contemporary world tends to be oppressive. Instead, the artists of ArtBrut Gallery pose questions about beauty and richness; with no clear answers as the question is also an affirmation. It is rather about transcending the oppressed subject toward empowerment, discovering the potential of one's own agency and the possibility of rebirth.

The themes explored by the male and female artists indicate a completely divergent understanding of the concept of what wealth or beauty is. Therefore, in the exhibition we will see works concerned with the environment protection and nature, related to fashion, critical of "wealth for wealth" and the inequalities around us.

Praise for life is mixed here with an analysis of the difficulties and oppositions it brings us. Abstract and colourful images are intertwined with black and white manifestos. Joy is juxtaposed with sadness. All concepts have their contradictions, every prince has his beggar and beauty is vague, difficult to define. Each creator dreams and has his or her own individual ideas about life, the future, the world, and each also has his or her own distinct opinion on beauty and wealth.

An integral part of the exhibition is also a collection of clothes and wardrobes – dresses, shirts, caps, jackets, hand-decorated and stylised by art brut artists and befriended professional designers, artists and fashion designers. These are unique garments, partly specially prepared for the exhibition and partly coming from the collection of the ArtBrut Gallery.

The theme of the beautiful and the rich can at the same time be a question posed as to what really constitutes beauty and wealth in our modern times. Is it possible to be beautiful and bad, poor and attractive, rich and good? Is self-perception more important or equivalent to how the outside world perceives us?