Head-Wig (Portrait of an exhibition) curated by Polish artist Paulina Olowska

25 September - 29 November 2009

Polish artist, Paulina Olowska, has brought together a number of works by international artists which can be related by a common theme, what she has termed ‘perceptual ambiguity’.

Most of the selected artworks operate within the genre of portraiture either specifically or ambiguously and include paintings by Jarosław Bauć, Jakub Julian Ziółkowski and Simon Ling and photography by Cindy Sherman and Catherine Sullivan. Olowska has designed the installation creating a labyrinth of images which distort the space of the gallery so that a narrative arises between the different pieces.

The subject for the exhibition originated from Olowska’s interest in a painting by Józef Mehoffer (1869 – 1949), a leading painter of the Young Poland movement, Portrait of Artist’s Wife on Yellow Background (1907). This painting, which can be found in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, illustrates an elegant woman wearing a large fur hat but on further examination could also depict a monster with a golden eye.

The exhibition as a whole can be seen as a mise- en- abyme, a hall of mirrors, in which the outrageous, the hysterical and the intimate all speak to one another, sharing the same psychic space. Altogether the works ‘form a unique constellation where clichés become surreal and the usual uncanny’.

Head-Wig includes work by Jarosław Bauć, Simon Ling, Nina Köennemann, Elka Krajewska, Ken Okiishi, Paulina Olowska, Mathilde Rosier, Cindy Sherman, Catherine Sullivan, Cathy Wilkes, Katharina Wulff and Jakub Julian Ziółkowski.

The exhibition is supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Polish Cultural Institute, Goethe Institute and is part of POLSKA! YEAR a year of contemporary everything from POLSKA! 2009-2010