Two series by Polish Conceptualist Zdzisław Sosnowski addressing the complex connections will be featured at the exhibition staged at the National Museum in Wrocław to celebrate EURO 2012. “It is not going to be a commercial take on a mass event – declares Dr. Adam Sobota, the exhibition’s curator – as the featured works inspire reflection on such phenomena as self-creation and career in the modern world dominated by mass media and mass communication which determine the functioning of both art and sport.”
The exhibition will feature Sosnowski’s early pieces from the 1970s, the “golden period” of Polish soccer, and his most recent works which seem particularly relevant in connection with the approaching EURO 2012. In the Goalkeeper series (1974), the artist referred to his personal experience as an active sportsman (goalkeeper for the Calisia club in Kalisz) to create his image as an artist. He photographed himself staged as a celebrity, ostentatiously attired, with the ball and goal in the background, surrounded by sexy models, to comment ironically on the dominance of the media over traditional values of culture and art. The new stage in the development of electronic media and digital technology has inspired the artist to return to the “Goalkeeper” theme in the Robokeeper series with an emphasis on virtual reality and message manipulation. The principal photographic and film pieces and the publication entitled Goalkeeper forever were produced in 2009.
By juxtaposing the two series from two different periods, the exhibition elucidates the works’ multiple and multifarious meanings and confronts them with external contexts.