events main gallery | 11.9—18.10.15

Portrayals of the City — exhibition celebrating 150 years of Katowice's city status

publications catalogues/books | 2015

Miasto (The City) — publication The publication Miasto documents the exhibition entitled ‘Portrayals of the City’, which was realized following the curatorial concept of Marek Zieliński, and... 

City
The history of each city attempts to  encompass   its physiology and physiognomy; this is because  the perception of a city as a body, or inscibing it with a human figure, is as tempting as it is prevailing as a motif in art. This order is a reference to the classical process of creation, to the times when the hierarchy of a city and fate was governed by absolute silence, when it had some mystifying fairytale-like epiphany at its core, and all thoughts revolved around a mysterious myth that formed an opening to a boundless metaphysical space. Yet the city of Katowice was not created in a space filled with the illusion of time, because it happened when time became stalled due to the collision of stone and metal, accompanied by horrendous roaring and grinding, which heralded the foundation of the city based on the verdict and whims of money. It was money that beat out the rhythm for the newly founded city, delineated its horizons and the panorama of newly built facades, set the pace for streets that appeared and disappeared, and coloured it with impenetrable grey mixed with burnt red bricks. The process of its amorphous expansion endowed the city with 'new' and forever changing social and cultural changes, in compliance with the directives that came with the quickly following and passing years and decades. We are not able to accurately measure and draw its multi-layered, inconsistent timeline, nor can we present its resulting consequences, because Katowice is perhaps predominantly, an underground city, where a lot of momentous events occured out of view, beyond the visible panorama. The truth is seeping out from cracks and crevices, revealing itself in births and deaths.

Curator Marek Zieliński

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