MASTER PIECES – exhibition presenting the collection of ArtBrut Gallery in Wrocław

Opening: Thursday 26 September 2024, 5 p.m.
Open until: Friday 25 October 2024

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

Exibition Artistic Mentor: Dominik Podsiadły
Producer: Marta Wiśniewska

The MASTER PIECES exhibition is related to the 15th anniversary of the ArtBrut Gallery & Studio in Wrocław. ArtBrut Gallery & Studio is a long-term, non-commercial socio-cultural project of the “World of Hope” Association.

The exhibition tells the story of the unique collection created by ArtBrut Gallery & Studio since 2009, comprising some 600 works purchased over the years from dozens of artists. The collection is an outstanding overview of contemporary art brut and outsider art, and the exhibition will provide an opportunity to see works that are not regularly open to the public. The collection of the ArtBrut Gallery & Studio in Wrocław is wonderfully diverse. It includes paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, installations and objects. Video works, sound works, digital photography and prints are also part of the collection, as well as comic and textual works such as manifestos, artistic notes or poetic texts.

Works from the ArtBrut Gallery & Studio collection have been shown in many exhibitions at home and abroad, including: ON THE COMMON. WAVES EVERYWHERE 2 / 15th Media Art Biennale WRO 2013 PIONEERING VALUES, Wroclaw 2013; ANTIDOTUM / 12th Survival Art Review ‘CITY – INFLAMMATORY STATE’ in 2014; HANDLE WITH CARE / OSTRALE’015 Dresden, Germany 2015; EAT ART / ‘openHUB Europe’ project, Milan, Italy 2015; PAR-DELÀ LES TABOUS / ‘Art et Déchirure’ Festival, in Rouen, France 2016.

With the exhibition, we would like to reach a wider audience, collectors, and cultural & artistic institutions - with information about this important collection. Still, we also hope that it will create a space for discussion on the place of Polish artists of art brut and outsider art in contemporary art and culture.

CURATOR’S TEXT / Dominik Podsiadły

Man’s need for art is [...] stronger than, our need for bread. Without bread, we die of hunger, but without art, we die of boredom.
Jean Dubuffet

The MASTER PIECES presentation reveals the uncanny facets of art created out of an inner need and standing outside the beaten paths of socially convention-laden aesthetics. The source of its transcendent power is an uncompromising conceptual message combined with resolute personal expression. This art is not dominated by form or content - these fundamental beings, present in the traditional notion of beauty, intertwine in an inseparable emanation, vivisecting our world of needs and subconscious desires. The art collection of the artists associated with the Socio-Cultural Inclusion Studio, as it breaks with the usual conventions, contributes to the preservation of meaningful aspects of culture. The collection consists of more than 600 works by several dozen artists who, over the years, have become the family of Wrocław’s ArtBrut Gallery. Unfortunately, their outsider art lives, in the shadow of the main events on the map of Wrocław’s social scene. The ArtBrut Gallery is a place created by enthusiasts, it struggles with financial problems and has too little exhibition and storage space compared to other cultural organisations that are already poorly financed and marginalised by public institutions. We are faced with the difficult choice of whether to show only a small part of the collection for the 15th anniversary, without displaying all its riches; or to pack all the works into a space that is too small. As a result of an inspiring discussion at the gallery, I changed the exhibition space into an unusual ‘work collection’, reminiscent of the storerooms of art collectors who keep their collections in overflowing crates and boxes. This procedure will enable viewers to actively interact with the works of the ArtBrut Gallery artists while at the exhibition.