19.11.2021 – 29.01.2022
The exhibition rem\a/inder consists of selected works by the Twożywo group, which Mariusz Libel and Krzysztof Sidorek agreed to arrange and recompose especially for the space of 66P. The pretext for the presentation is the artbook Plundering Reality’s Ruins (Warsaw 2020), which summarises the group’s activities.
We present Twożywo’s first retrospective exhibition since the dissolution of the group, which is an attempt to capture its uniqueness.
Twożywo was active, publicly and openly, in 1994–2011. The group’s last exhibition at Atlas Sztuki in Łódź (WYbór obRAZ, 2011) was an official farewell to their collective presence on the art scene (see the artists’ official announcement: http://www.twozywo.art.pl/twzw.php?d).
Ten years have passed since that moment. In the meantime, liquid times have brought us a whole raft of “attractions”: the ozone hole over the Arctic, the first human stem cells obtained from a cloned human embryo, Hurricane Sandy, the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI, Euromaidan, the terrorist attack in Paris, Brexit, the Notre-Dame cathedral fire, first photographs of the black hole, and many, many more… Let this brief selection finish with the (un)gracious reign of COVID-19.
The mass nature of messages addressed to us clearly shows us our place in the global village. Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931), one of the classics of social psychology, warned over a hundred years ago: “The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes” (The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind, 1908). Although Le Bon’s other theories, such as the theory of the development of nations, seem politically incorrect from today’s perspective, embarrassing us with their anachronism or inspiring fear, the observation about the vanishing of the conscious “I” has lost none of its relevance. What does Twożywo say to this?
The exhibition rem\a/inder is an artistic message addressed to the individual. As faithful followers of letters, Mariusz Libel and Krzysztof Sidorek have decided to anchor the retrospective presentation around phonetic graphic signs. How does it sound? Not always pleasant to the ear, this one thing is certain. Twożywo was never afraid to tackle thorny issues, which may have bothered us both 20 years ago as well as today. By posing questions in the form of affirmative sentences, the artistic practice of the collective was always based on throwing around travestied quotes, predictions, morals and even adages: Stagnation, Creation is Love, The Antichrist Shall Be an Artist, Emanations of Weakness, Purity Check, Play and Work, Vive la Révolution. Twożywo’s works keep asking the same questions. Quite simply: about commitment to our ideals and the sternness of our moral fibre.
The exhibition at 66P will feature stickers and stencils designed by the artists together with Robert Czajka and Anna Pochmara as the Pinokio group (until 1998); reproductions of murals located in many cities in Poland (Warsaw, Płock, Krakow); original screen prints and stencils; animations; books, and in them and outside of them – letters. Letters to be rearranged, read out, watched, passed around by word of mouth, exchanged to make words – messages to be freely interpreted, from your perspective, from your preferred point of view and in your own time. Following Vilém Flusser, the artists stubbornly and invariably uphold the statement that an act of human communication is also an act of freedom.
Twożywo wants to remind us – what will remain once everything is over?
rem\a/inder | Twożywo
exhibition at 66P
20 Nov 2021–29 Jan 2022
opening: 19 Nov 2021, 7 p.m.
The exhibition is announced by the mural Stagnation, described in more detail here.
***
Words on the borderline of hygiene and trickery, i.e. an attempt to understand Twożywo
(commentary on the exhibition rem\a/inder)
What did/do you do when you were/are told to go stand in the corner?
You’ve failed again! That ship has sailed! You’re not acting like yourself! Do not say that! Say yes! Shame on you!
Lo, the book, exactly worded,
Wherein all hath been recorded […]
(Thomas of Celano, Dies Irae, translated by William J. Irons)
(Emil Cioran, Drawn and Quartered, translated by Richard Howard)
Twożywo watched the corners. Corners for doling out punishment. At the turn of the century, when the plates of time pressed against each other with the greatest force, there were many corners and much work.
Who ate the triangles?
Pinocchio has a pointed cap on his head, a long nose and a sabre in his hand. He is lurking behind every corner in the capital, almost like Warsaw’s Man with the White Eyes. Only a little bit smaller, more outspoken, and actually there are three of them (only the third one is a bit of a terrier). Sometimes they are accompanied by a spectre, but they are growing up and becoming increasingly interested in observing the form and content of the world. Brandishing stencils, they clutch virus-ridden handrails on buses.
Now write what makes you different from others
1… 2… 3…
They connect the dots of footpaths, measure sections, encounter random points, draw lines and sometimes violate borders. Coming out! The Antichrist Shall be an Artist – stencil graffiti on the wall of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, quickly erased. That’s tough, life goes on. Pinocchio finishes primary school (of life), takes off his cap, peels off his nose, puts the telementary (sic!) into the drawer – maybe one day it will come in handy.
There are rumours that we’re sinking, Captain.
From my position I can see two points […]
Wedge
When a triangle morphs into an angle, something is automatically missing. Are these emanations of weakness? Not necessarily. The relationships between the rays change, the vertex grows in importance, and the legs are more and more open. Just like an acrobat who will dive into faith for you.
A dive into knowledge!
The ever-changing display of the shapes of plants, which I have been following for many years, awakens more and more within me the notion: the shapes of the plants that surround us were not all created at a certain moment and then locked in the given shape, they received… a happy mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt to many different conditions in many different places.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Story of My Botanical Studies, 1831)
Horn of plenty
Volumes abound on the roughly hewn shelf. Don’t you recognize them? Sit back and look at the covers. Take your time, there is more than a decade of eating the bitter fruits of understanding ahead of us:
Play and Work
Fear’s Grand Scheme Regarding You
Sheeple’s Fate
Inearthia Consciousnest
Vive la Révolution
Oftenderness
filth dope lone
Our Father Is Watching
IHS Creation Is Love (!)
Behind the corner
Strolling in the city is never boring. Increased vigilance, a passport in my pocket, but I don’t really want to leave. Even though Captain Europe is calling.
“Urbanmindfulness,” “culture jamming” and a handful of other splendiguous maccaronisms make the city as soft as dough! Warsaw. Grand rooms, but once rush hour is over.
What to do when the luggage starts to weigh heavier and the step becomes sluggish? Active girls need no pearls (!) The last burst of energy, you start running and… you trip over the stretched rope (it must’ve been Maria M. from that block!). Not to pick fault, but who is training whom?
The city goes from strength to strength, it becomes a metropolis, its population increases. Buses are empty, everyone is driving their car, there are traffic jams everywhere and, you know, the concentration of pm10 in the air is rising. Colourful screens flash over the passengers’ heads – this wave is unstoppable! Encircled by squares, we keep on going. Last stop – someone is getting off. Someone else is looking for a shelter, because he has no roof over his head and decides to take the entire route once again.
Never-ending returns.
WYbór obRAZ (2011), an illustrated selection of quotes from Emil Cioran, is the last joint project by Twożywo. Thanks to their persistent and fruitful ploughing of the artfield, the artists have become firmly established in the language of Polish art in the early 21st century. The exhibition rem\a/inder consists of selected works by the Twożywo group, which Mariusz Libel and Krzysztof Sidorek agreed to arrange and recompose especially for the space of 66P. The exhibition is based on letters and tells the story of how we see ourselves through stencils, stickers, billboards, animations and murals. It was inspired by the artbook Plundering Reality’s Ruins (Warsaw 2020), which summarises the group’s activities.
Text: Karolina Vyšata, curator of the exhibition
About Twożywo
It all started with Pinokio, in Warsaw in 1994. Back then, there were three of them: Robert Czajka, Mariusz Libel and Krzysztof Sidorek. In 1998, the last two of them established Twożywo, which continued and developed Pinokio’s work. Stickers on buses, small stencilled graffiti by the street door. Then came murals and billboards scattered throughout Poland and elsewhere. There was a website from the very beginning, still viewable, designed from scratch by Sidorek. They hacked reality together, both real and virtual, until the group’s dissolution in 2011, during the exhibition WYbór obRAZ + Nihil Negativum in Łódź. Since then, Mariusz Libel has been working independently, still sharing (typo)graphic comments about our today’s world.
In 2020, an impressive monograph of the group came out. Plundering Reality’s Ruins, a book published on the initiative of art collector Osman Djajadisastra, is a closed chapter, but an open discussion; it contains texts by people who were close to the collective, but who preferred to share their subjective opinions rather than give an art-historical summary. A typographic puzzle, the book was the duo’s last collaborative project; unlike their short-lived street art works, it will keep readers hooked for a long time.
“Speaking honestly, I feel helpless in the face of the now-finite artistic output of Twożywo. Helpless in the face of the fact that each piece I find on Twożywo’s website […] provokes a new interpretation, enraptures with its concision and brevity in hitting the very target.”
Wojciech Kozłowski, “Trwożywo”, in Plundering Reality’s Ruins, edited by Katarzyna Tórz, Warsaw 2020, p. 360