Records. Leszek Brogowski and gn Gallery 1978–1981

Can photography become a tool of critical thinking, and can a gallery become a place for building an independent community? How can art be made within the reality of political constraints? On Friday, 9 October, at 18:00, the opening of an exhibition devoted to the work of Leszek Brogowski and the history of the legendary Gdańsk gallery gn, active from 1978 to 1981 and the predecessor of the Gdańsk Gallery of Photography, will take place.

The exhibition presents archival materials documenting the gallery's unique conceptual activity: photographs, drawings, prints, ephemeral publications, as well as drawings and instant photographs by Leszek Brogowski, little known in Poland, and selected works by artists who exhibited at gn.

Artist, Intellectual, Engineer

Leszek Brogowski, a humanist, intellectual, engineer and graduate of the Gdańsk University of Technology, was one of the few artists invited to co-create the International Polaroid Collection (Polaroid Collection) in the 1980s. In his practice he consistently expanded the field of art, analysing the meaning of communication and the materiality of the work. He treated photography as a democratic tool, accessible, common and carrying the potential for social change. In the spirit of conceptualism, close to Fluxus, he used it as a medium of analysis and documentation, breaking away from the tradition of aestheticising the image that dominated Poland in 1945–1990.

Neo-avant-garde in Gdańsk

The gn gallery, operating at the Association of Polish Photographic Artists, Pomeranian District, became one of the most important centres of conceptual and performative art in Poland. In just under four years, from 3 January 1978 to 13 December 1981, nearly 50 exhibitions were realised, most accompanied by original catalogues. The gallery was managed and led by Leszek Brogowski, who, together with the engaged young artists Witold Węgrzyn, Paweł Borkowski and Wojciech Leszczyński, invited both established and lesser-known figures of the local and national art scene, among them Jan Berdyszak, Wojciech Bruszewski, Małgorzata Borowska, Witosław Czerwonka, Zbigniew Dłubak, Teresa Murak, Jadwiga Przybylak, Andrzej Różycki, Zofia Rydet and Grzegorz Sztabiński, as well as foreign artists such as Victor Burgin, Stano Filko, Milan Grygar, Ivan Kafka, Jürgen O. Olbrich, ORLAN and the group HPA (Histoire et Prospection de l'Art).

The activity of gn belonged to the landscape of the Polish neo-avant-garde, shaped alongside galleries such as Foto-Medium-Art in Wrocław, Akumulatory 2 in Poznań and Studio in Warsaw. Unlike many of them, gn was not connected with an art academy; it grew out of a grassroots initiative of photographers, artists and critics.

The founders of the gallery did not formulate a manifesto. They saw the value of art in its practice, in building relationships and exchanging ideas, and in consistently sustaining a creative attitude in life. The goal was not to create masterpieces but to develop the creative process as a way of thinking and acting. Therefore Leszek Brogowski and the art critic Marceli Bacciarelli, who worked with him, invited artists interested in the non-commercial and analytical dimension of art, open to experiment and new forms of collaboration, to exhibitions that changed every month. Their activity belonged to the democratic artistic practices developing in Poland and Central Europe and to international networks of exchange.

The Unique Formula of gn

– The gallery's formula proved surprisingly contemporary. It functioned as a platform for exchanging ideas, a laboratory of collaboration and an institutional experiment, not merely a place for presenting works. Brogowski created a tool for building relationships and artistic community, a space in which the creative process was as important as its result. Alongside the AUT gallery (from 1981 OUT), gn was the only conceptual exhibition space in the Trójmiasto area, says Małgorzata Taraszkiewicz-Zwolicka, co-curator of the exhibition.

The activity of the gallery…