Ignacy Czwartos

Polonia Uncensored

★★☆☆☆

Curated by Piotr Bernatowicz
On until 17 May 2024

Czwartos’ pseudohistorical paintings were to be Poland’s official Biennale entry until a change of government last winter thew them on art history’s scrap heap. That they now hang in a pop-up outside the Giardini walls proves that the deposed populists care as little for art as the liberals who again control Poland’s art scene.

These images claim to tease the nation’s sore historical blind spots. Czwartos’ canvases laud Poland’s 20th-century martyrs in a bleak colour palette. Leaders of the national armed resistance who perished in the Nazi occupation and anti-communist activists killed by their own state peer from the walls like paper props in a school re-enactment.

Litigating old crimes is on point in this Biennale. Why, then, were these well-known stories disqualified from the decolonial orgy? Czwartos stepped too far by shaming the abusers in his historical diorama. Next to a named SS soldier, he painted Putin and Merkel, thus suggesting that this history is also the very present. He may not be wrong. His painting, however, proves little, and his sign-writer’s hand loses art history’s bet just for now.


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Megan Rooney, Echoes & Hours at Kettle’s Yard ★★☆☆☆

Megan Rooney

Echoes & Hours

★★☆☆☆

For all this bravado, Rooney’s compositions offer only a very surface experience of abstraction.

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rozanskaite, Inflammation at Lithuanian pavilion Venice ★★★☆☆

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rožanskaité

Inflammation

★★★☆☆

One of the novelties in Venice is the artwork that looks good but on reflection isn’t.

Eddie Ruscha, Seeing Frequencies at Cedric Bardawil ★☆☆☆☆

Eddie Ruscha

Seeing Frequencies

★☆☆☆☆

But either the curator or the artist should have known better.

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón at South Parade ★★☆☆☆

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón

phosphorescence of my local lore

★★☆☆☆

Rot overpowered this subject and came for the object next. 

Auudi Dorsey at PM/AM ★★★★☆

Auudi Dorsey

★★★★☆

Dorsey records the human experience with the true universalism of paint.

Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, Bad Luck Rock at Josh Lilley ★★☆☆☆

Sula Bermúdez-Silverman

Bad Luck Rock

★★☆☆☆

This is a poor man’s version of history or a philistine collector’s absolution.

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