Adam Szymczyk and documenta 14

Artists from Poland are represented in the area of past art (only in Athens): photographic and written documents by the writer, painter and situation artist Krzysztof Niemczyk (*1938 Warsaw - 1994), can be seen: in the 1960s he made a name for himself with actions against the Communist police state. Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952), one of the key figures of the Polish avant-garde is represented (only in Kassel) with six drawings from a larger series made in 1940 in which he witnessed the deportation of Jews by the Nazis. In both locations visitors can view a number of his abstract visionary studies, in which, after the Second World War, he describes the influence of sunlight on the human eye. Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973, Ill. 5a, b), who was interned by the Nazis in a number of different concentration camps, is exhibiting works both in Athens and Kassel: these are extensive sets of sculptures made of polyester resin showing her preoccupation with her own body after she was diagnosed with cancer at the end of the 1960s in Paris. Andrzej Wróblewski (1927-1957) is showing works in both places: images made in 1953 during an early form of Polish socialist realism, which refer to current events in the Netherlands and Poland.

As in the 5. Berlin Biennale, living artists were mostly left free to decide which works they wanted to show or wished to create specially for the exhibition. Some of them regarded it as a problem to choose and/or produce works of equal value with powerful statements for the two parallel exhibitions in Athens and Kassel. Thailand, for example is represented by the multimedia artist, Arin Rungjang (*1975 Bangkok, Ill. 6), who deals with the discrepancies between democracy and military dictatorship in his country. His video installations, drawings and sculptural work deal with the history of the Democracy Monument which came into being in 1932 after the dissolution of the absolute monarchy in 1932 in Bangkok. He uses eyewitness accounts and written documents dealing with the popular uprising against the military dictatorship in October 1973 which culminated in a march from the Thammasat University to the monument. Radio broadcasts and the uprising of the Bangkok students inflamed the student uprising at the Polytechnic in Athens in November, whose aim was to end the military dictatorship. Rungjang’s video installation in the Benaki Museum in Athens brings the events of 1973 in Bangkok and Athens together (“And then there were none [Tomorrow we will become Thailand]”, 2016). The brass and wood replica of a relief of the Democracy Monument in Bangkok can be seen in the Neue Neue Galerie (Neuen Hauptpost) in Kassel, along with drawings and paintings and a video.

Anyone expecting the latest works and concepts from living artists will have to think again from time to time. Without a doubt the most impressive and effective work in Kassel stands in front of the Fridericianum : a somewhat smaller form of the “Parthenon of Books” by the Argentinean concept and performance artist, Marta Minujín (*1941 Buenos Aires, Ill. 7), which could be seen after the collapse of the military junta in 1983 in Buenos Aires, where the artist had filled the steel construction with 25,000 books that had been banned and confiscated by the junta. The new version was commissioned from the artist by documenta 14. Even in Kassel the power of her work as a metaphor for democracy, which was discovered in Athens, and a symbol of education, remains unbroken: especially when placed before the classical antique architecture of the Fridericianum in a land like Germany, and, of course with reference to Athens as one of the sites of documenta 14. The new construction was to have been filled with 100,000 “banned books” from all ages and peoples, donated by the general public. However it was not completed.