Records. Leszek Brogowski and Gallery gn 1978‒1981

Exhibition opening: → 9.10 (Friday), 6:00 pm NOMUS – Nowe Muzeum Sztuki and Gdańska Galeria Fotografii ul. Jaracza 14, Gdańsk

The opening will be interpreted into PJM. Admission free!

Can photography become a tool of critical thinking, and a gallery a place for building an independent community? How can art be made within the reality of political constraints? On Friday, 9 October at 6:00 pm, the opening will take place of an exhibition devoted to the work of Leszek Brogowski and the history of the legendary Gdańsk gallery gn, active in 1978–1981 – the predecessor of the Gdańska Galeria Fotografii.

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

Artist, intellectual, engineer

Leszek Brogowski – humanist, intellectual, engineer, graduate of Politechnika Gdańska – 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, widespread 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 in Poland in 1945–1990.

Neo-avant-garde in Gdańsk

Gallery gn, operating at the Związek Polskich Artystów Fotografików Okręgu Pomorskiego, became one of the most important centres of conceptual and performative art in Poland. Within less than four years – from 3 January 1978 to 13 December 1981 – nearly 50 exhibitions were realised, most of them accompanied by authorial catalogues. The gallery's manager and leader was Leszek Brogowski, who, together with the engaged young creators Witold Węgrzyn, Paweł Borkowski and Wojciech Leszczyński, invited both recognised 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 fitted into the landscape of Polish neo-avant-garde, shaped also by the galleries 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 the community 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 fitted into the democratic artistic practices developing in Poland and Central Europe, as well as international networks of exchange.

The unique formula of gallery gn

• The formula of the gallery 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. Next to the AUT gallery (from…