Mistrzowie / Masters

Zbigniew Libera

Mistrzowie / Masters

Zbigniew Libera

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15 fotografii (jedenaście o wym. 70 × 100; dwie o wym. 70 × 90; dwie o wym. 70 × 50 cm)
Praca w depozycie Galerii Arsenał
The “Masters” series (2004) emerged as a protest by the artist against the refusal to display one of his works (“Lego. Concentration Camp”) at the Venice Biennale in 1997. The curator of the Polish exhibition, Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski, believed this piece would lead to an international scandal and negatively impact Polish-Jewish relations. Subsequently, Libera decided not to exhibit any of his works at the Biennale. Libera created fictitious pages of popular mass media – “Gazeta Wyborcza,” “Gazeta Wyborcza Magazine,” “Polityka” – where he placed fictional articles about avant-garde artists of the 1970s, his “Masters”: Zofia Kulik, Jan Świdziński, Anastazja Wiśniewska, and Andrzej Partum.
This work became a tribute to their memory and a contemplation on the history of art, the phenomenon of rejection, the context in which art exists, and its involvement in contemporary market-marketing processes. As Libera put it, “The press has become the sole arbiter in discussions of what is good and bad in art; it elevates onto the pedestal and simultaneously rejects and destroys.”