ISBN HC: 978-3-7757-5153-7
ISBN AWF: 978-83-935822-3-5
size: 22×28 cm
hardcover, canvas
780 pages, color, 764 illustrations
publishers: Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation / Hatje Cantz Verlag
price: 329 PLN, 78 EUR
International distribution: Hatje Cantz Verlag
Polish distribution: artinfo.pl

Andrzej Wróblewski. Exhibiting

concept and editors: Magdalena Ziółkowska, Wojciech Grzybała
authors: Noit Banai, Marek Bieńczyk, Father Adam Boniecki, Marzenna Ciechańska, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Soren Gauger, Eckhart Gillen, Zofia Gołubiew, Wojciech Grzybała, Owen Hatherley, Tom Holert, Dorota Jarecka, Joanna Kiliszek, Aleksander Kościów, Eryk Krasucki, Anna Król, Mira Marcinów, Zbigniew Mikołejko, Ania Muszyńska, Ruth Noack, Robert Piłat, Martin Pollack, Maria Poprzęcka, Dieter Roelstraete, Tadeusz Różewicz, Marek Sobczyk, Olga Stanisławska, Agnieszka Szewczyk, Steven ten Thije, Martin Waldmeier, Marta Wróblewska, Andrzej Wróblewski, Magdalena Ziółkowska
research: Kacper Czernij, Wojciech Grzybała, Katarzyna Trzeciak, Magdalena Ziółkowska
translations: Joanna Figiel, Soren Gauger, Krzysztof Kościuczuk, Aaron Shoichet, Joanna Trzeciak-Huss
style editor in English: Jane Warrilow
graphic design, layout: Łukasz Paluch / AnoMalia Studio
picture editors: Kacper Czernij, Wojciech Grzybała, Magdalena Ziółkowska
DTP and photograph preparation: Tomasz Kubaczyk

Andrzej Wróblewski. Exhibiting is a publication concerning the history of the exhibits and contemporary curatorial strategies that have shaped the reception of the artist’s work.

In over 780 pages, we find essays by specially invited authors—scholars, artists, curators, and journalists—each of which focuses on a selected work on paper by Andrzej Wróblewski. Professor Marzenna Ciechańska details many recently uncovered large-format works painted by Wróblewski on packing paper, which have been subject to rigorous conservation. In turn, the initiators and editors of the volume—Dr. Magdalena Ziółkowska and Wojciech Grzybała—analyze the contexts and circumstances behind the artist’s posthumous exhibitions, including his own ideas and curatorial concepts.

The book also contains a generous selection of Wróblewski’s reviews and theoretical texts on exhibitions, never-before-published archivalia, and a summation of the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation’s twelve years of existence.

An excerpt from a review of Andrzej Wróblewski. Exhibiting by Professor Agnieszka Rejniak-Majewska, University of Łódź

Andrzej Wróblewski. Exhibiting—a book no less monumental than its predecessor—continues the research of the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation into the artist’s work, tackling controversies like the titles of works, the specifics of the materials used, the state of their preservation, and the circumstances in which they were made. It takes pieces from outside of the canon, unknown and unexhibited for many years, and subjects them to multifaceted interpretations. The attempt to take a new look at selected pieces is combined here with an overview of how Wróblewski’s work has been displayed—the “framework” for the exhibitions after his death, how the works were seen and described. How a canon of his works was created and revised over time. Finally—how the very space of the exhibitions opened perspectives for seeing and experiencing them. In this last regard, the book’s visual form is vital—a thorough overview of the artist’s exhibitions, both solo and collective, situating his work in dialogue with other artists in various contexts, is presented through photographic documentation, made up of a photographic essay that stretches across several pages. 

(…) the involvement of thirty authors, including great professionals in art history, Wróblewski scholars, historians of communism, as well writers, essayists, artists, and philosophers, in interpreting and contemplating his works, is not just an expression of interdisciplinary inclusivity; it is also a focus on reception and viewers’ readiness to reflect upon the experience of these works. Andrzej Wróblewski. Exhibiting focuses less on the role of curators and their concepts that it documents, and more on the potential created by Wróblewski’s works—their transforming, changing visions. In the book’s visually outstanding composition, this has its correlate in the subtly selected photographs documenting the exhibitions, in which the viewers observing the pictures appear as a porte-parole of figures from Wróblewski’s canvases. Right in the heart of it all is the encounter with the work, and the editors are all too aware of the mediations and mythologizations they have tracked down, and how they work. 

Publication available at: hatjecantz.de and artinfo.pl