L’arte differente: MOCAK al MAXXI

The exhibition of works from the MOCAK Collection at the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome will take place at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. This will be the first such large‑scale and comprehensive presentation of works from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cracow, MOCAK, to be presented in Italy. We will be presenting over 50 works including paintings, photographs, video, installations, and objects. The MOCAK Collection was first presented outside Poland at the exhibition Art Is Freedom which was shown at the Palace of Art in Lviv in 2014. The selection included a few dozen video works and photographs of Polish and international artists.

The exhibition, coproduced by the MOCAK, and the MAXXI, is the a major event of the “Expanding Horizon” program and will be an opportunity for the Italian public to become acquainted with the canon of Polish contemporary art  represented by artists such as: Paweł Althamer, Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Rafał Bujnowski, Andrzej Dłużniewski, Edward Dwurnik, Tomasz Ciecierski, Katarzyna Górna, Zbigniew Libera, Marcin Maciejowski, Bartek Materka, Józef Robakowski, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jadwiga Sawicka and Krzysztof Wodiczko. The presentation will also include international artists and artistic groups such as: AES+F, Reza Aramesh, Josef Dabernig, Maya Gold, Krištof Kintera, Sarah Lucas, Shahar Marcus, Muntean/Rosenblum, Shinji Ogawa and Daniel Spoerri.

The MOCAK Collection comprises 4,557 works by 235 artists from 32 countries. It is MOCAK’s aim to persuade those not professionally connected with art that art is an indispensable tool for understanding the world. We want to fight the fallacy that art should be pleasing and decorative. One of the Museum’s main tasks is the promotion of friendship between art and audiences. The Collection is an important tool in this process. From its very beginning, it has been one of MOCAK’s underlying principles to juxtapose Polish and international art in order to demonstrate that the former is part of the latter and that it shares its prevailing values. The exhibition in Rome will demonstrate this par excellence.

Artists: AES+F, Paweł Althamer, Reza Aramesh, Tomasz Bajer, Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Piotr Blamowski, Małgorzata Blamowska, Bernhard Johannes Blume, Rafał Bujnowski, Josef Dabernig, Andrzej Dłużniewski, Stanisław Dróżdż, Edward Dwurnik, Pola Dwurnik, Tomasz Ciecierski, Maya Gold, Katarzyna Górna, Przemysław Jasielski, Koji Kamoji, Karolina Kowalska, Paweł Książek, Leszek Lewandowski, Zbigniew Libera, Sarah Lucas, Marcin Maciejowski, Shahar Marcus, Małgorzata Markiewicz, Bartek Materka, Muntean/Rosenblum, Shinji Ogawa, Julian Opie, Laura Pawela, Józef Robakowski, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jadwiga Sawicka, Daniel Spoerri, Marian Warzecha, Peter Weibel, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Heimo Zobernig

Curator: Maria Anna Potocka