EXHIBITION “PATRICIA PICCININI. WE ARE!"

CSW, Toruń, October 29, 2021 - April 10, 2022

Organizer: World Art Foundation
Co-organizers: Tumult Foundation and the EnergaCAMERIMAGE International Film Festival 2021, the City of Toruń, the Centre of Contemporary Art "Znaki Czasu" in Toruń
The main partner: Marshal Office of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region
Partners: European Film Center CAMERIMAGE, The Institute for Cultural Exchange in Tübingen (Germany) and the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj (Denmark)

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Starting October 29, 2021, Toruń will be the place of an extraordinary artistic event. For the first time in Poland, there will be a chance to see the works of the world-renowned Australian sculptor Patricia Piccinini, including the highly acclaimed sculptures presented at the Venice Biennale. The exhibition is entitled Patricia Piccinini. We Are! and is organized by the World Art Foundation, founded in 2006 by director David Lynch and director of the EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival Marek Żydowicz, who is the exhibition’s curator. Sculptures, installations and video presentations of the artist will be presented at the Centre of Contemporary Art "Znaki Czasu" in Toruń and take up the space of about 2000 m2. One of the artist’s sculptures will have its world premiere at the exhibition in Toruń. The exhibition will be accompanied by a film review, meetings with artists, discussions with experts and workshops.

Patricia Piccinini (born in 1965) has been arousing attention and enthusiasm all over the world with her art for years. Her sensuous, magical, disturbingly bizarre, hyperrealist sculptures force us to ask questions and arouse controversy. The large-scale installations are played out amidst cross-currents of science fiction, natural science and feminism. The exhibition in Toruń will invite the audience on a marvelous journey through a series of vivid scenes where hybrid creatures interact in everyday situations. With silicone, fibreglass, nylon, plastic and human hair Piccinini creates lifelike futuristic narratives that raise highly relevant issues of existence, climate and technology. All this allow the artist to achieve an extremely realistic form of sculptures that never leave the audience indifferent.

In Piccinini's transcending universe, digital and biotechnological opportunities have shaped new hybrid life forms. Piccinini depicts the contrasts in her art, where the playful and the imaginative meet the bizarre and the horrific. Piccinini celebrates everything that is ‘different’ and challenges boundaries among humans, animals and plants. Here we find poetry and beauty in the connected, the strange and the diverse. She invites us to fantasize over the possible communities and kinships the future technologies will create across species.

Patricia Piccinini’s artistic practice is embedded in a firm commitment to environmental and eco-feminist issues. In sensuous, complex works Piccinini investigates how we live and forge relations in an era when the natural and the artificial connect in new ways. Her works involve ethical messages about empathy and care for all the creatures and plants we share this earth with – and for the still unknown beings that will live among us in the future. Her universe offers dreams and hopes of a future full of loving interspecies kinships and invites us to imagine the world anew.

Patricia Piccinini was born in 1965 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa. In 1972, the family emigrated to Australia, where Piccinini grew up. Graduate of the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne, where she has been a professor since 2017, previously obtaining an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne (2016). Receiver of a Lifetime Achievement Award from Melbourne Art Foundation in 2014. Her practice encompasses sculpture, photography, video and drawing and examines the nebulous boundary between the artificial and the natural in contemporary culture. Her work revolves around painting, video, sound, installations, digital prints and sculpture. In 2016, she was named by "The Art Newspaper" the most popular contemporary artist in the world.

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EXHIBITION "BRUNO NUYTTEN. PHOTOGRAPHY"

CSW, Toruń, Kuyavian – Pomeranian, November 13 - 25, 2021

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The filmmakers’ development and their paths tend to be very challenging, their areas of artistic interest – even more diversified. Some of them choose the beaten track, but there are others who search for their aesthetics and inspiration in similar or completely distant fields of art. Bruno Nuytten began his career as a cinematographer, and continued it as a screenwriter and director, to finally concentrate on photography. Born in 1945, in the suburbs of Paris, Nuytten passionately pursued the profession of a cinematographer for over 20 years of his career. As a cinematographer for feature movies, he accompanied many acclaimed directors, such as Jacques Doillon, Bob Raphelson, Stuart Rosenberg, Andrzej Żuławski, Alain Resnais, Claude Berri, and Jean Luc Godard among many others. Later, he focused on directing and screenwriting. Over the period 1986-2001, Nuytten made following films: Albert souffre, Passionnément, Jim, la nuit and Camille Claudel (awarded with César). He is a triple laureate of the prestigious César Award granted by the french Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques for the Best Cinematography in Barocco, Tchao pantin and for the Best Film – Camille Claudel. He received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Best Artistic Contribution in Invitation au voyage and the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography in Jean de Florette. Despite his long-standing dedication to the Tenth Muse, Bruno Nuytten moved himself away from cinematography in hope to discover the reality perceived without fiction and myths. That decision made it possible to redefine the system of values and discover a completely new form of artistic expression – photography. After his creativity break, which lasted over 10 years, he was invited to work with Le Fresnoy – the National Studio for Contemporary Arts in Tourcoing, France. He became the patron of eight artists, rediscovering the passion for capturing images, looking towards fleeting impressions and frames extracted from fading moments.

In return for this dedication, Le Frenoy gave Bruno Nuytten the opportunity to exhibit 1000 photos taken by the artist with his first smartphone which he received from his children for the 70th birthday. The display was presented in a darkened corridor on ten vertical screens. Each image was presented for only 7 seconds. The slideshow of clips and film frames, displayed without a stage and narrative superstructure, included every piece of reality which randomly caught the eyes and attention of the artist – both at night and during the day.

Bruno Nuytten most frequently photographs objects, places and undefined beings which at that specific time seemed to be weirdly familiar. He tames them in such a way. The peculiar photos he takes keep the audience on tenterhooks. They can be found somewhere on the edge of the real and imaginary world. The iPhone’s camera became his pocket laboratory. Through frequent image manipulations, Nuytten tries to obtain exactly the same feeling as the one accompanying him during the process of capturing it, hoping for making it shareable.