Guided Tour

A guided tour of the Czech Pope exhibition with the curator Piotr
Sikora.

A Czech Pope! Is it a mistake? A joke? A slip of the tongue! An irrational misunderstanding stemming from bringing together the head of the Catholic Church with Europe’s most unreligious nation. A classic Central European absurdity pronounced with a dead serious facial expression. On your knees! Lie prostrate and sing litanies! Oh, Czech nation, put the highest patriarch on you Hussite-laic throne! Given by your Slavic brothers, The Czech Pope!

Ewa Axelrad (PL), Ada Karczmarczyk (PL), Bartosz Kokosiński (PL), Mateusz Okoński (PL), Kuba Woynarowski (PL)

curators: Piotr Sikora, Piotr Zdybał
opening: 5. 2. 7pm
exhibition duration: 5. 2. - 16. 3. 2014 

Five young Polish artists, Ewa Axelrad, Ada Kaczmarczyk, Bartosz Kokosiński,  Mateusz Okoński and Jakub Woynarowski address the motifs of faith, religiousness and their obedient daughters: spiritualism and occultism. They look at sacrum with a critical eye. They dismiss hypocrisy typical for priests’ gibberish, yet they avoid taking sides with the mediocre leftist critique. The fact of taking up the topic of religion can be explained in several ways; from reacting to the Polish marriage with Catholicism, through a tradition of supporting arts by the Church, to the attractiveness of spiritualist motifs discussed by Nicolas Bourriaud in “Relational Aesthetics”. This time it is the viewer’s job to discover the meaning. What, then, will Czech people do with the Czech Pope? Perhaps, going against the well-known saying, will they announce him a prophet?

Piotr Sikora  is a critic and curator. He works as a visual arts curator at Malopolska Garden of Arts, curator of Photomonth ShowOFF section and is a “major artistic DJ” at Powiśle Club in Warsaw. He is also anthusiastic Bike Polo player. Sikora lives and works in Krakow and Warsaw.