What do young, ambitious and passionate young people need to create an interesting place of presenting art? A departure point – some space, equipment, money. The Gallery for Promotion of Young Artists has been working for nearly three years, attached to an experienced Culture Centre, showing that it’s possible to combine the old and the new.

The Gallery for Promotion of Young Artists is attached to the Bałuty Community Centre “Rondo” in £ód¼. Since when? And where did you take the idea for the Gallery from?

Agnieszka Kulazińska: The Gallery has been on the market for over 10 years now. Maciek and I started running it over two years ago, I think. The idea was taken from life. It’s proud sounding, but I really mean it. At the beginning we had problems with the realization of our own projects, ideas. When you start something it’s hard to find someone who believes in you, who would decide to give you a chance. Even if you have your own place, it’s hard to get money for your projects. We decided to establish a gallery open to young people. We had the name – we only needed to fill it with some contents.


Who works at the Gallery then and what are they responsible for?

A.K.: We run the Gallery together – Maciek and I. I am an art historian, Maciek graduated the Academy of Fine Arts in £ód¼. The division is sort of natural. I write texts, Maciek designs prints matters -  posters, folders, flyers; he also designed the new logo of the Gallery. We realize our own projects. The programme of the Gallery is developed jointly.
 


How does the Bałuty Community Centre help you?

A.K.: We both tried our hand somewhere else. The Centre gave us something to start with – the space, the equipment.

You realize a lot of projects – can you tell us about them?

A.K.: I’ll try to put it short. They are mainly young artists’ projects on current issues, everyday problems. Our main objective is to activate young artists, to make them think and express their opinions. Also, more prosaically – to give them opportunity to become known outside the academy. After all, there are many places in Łódź to show ‘names’, and there are more and more of them all the time, but nobody is interested in the promotion of young artists. And such projects offer good opportunity. They are some starting point, aren’t they? They can be a place of artists’ ups and downs, a place where they can compare their works with works of other artists – a place of consolidation perhaps, maybe crystallization of their aspirations. To me they are a forum for a dialogue with reality, with the city, with other artists.

Maciek Henryk Zdanowicz: After three-year activity we saw that our work, our projects, the Gallery itself are very necessary, not only in the region. More and more often artists from other art centres in Poland visit us – from Gdansk, Poznań, Toruń, Katowice and Warsaw. Our initiatives are mentioned along with other projects recognized by other galleries of contemporary art. We are supported by many institutions, such as say Museum of Cinematography, the cinema “Charlie”, the media. Through the internet we get to wider and wider audience.


You work with young artists. Can you call their attitude ‘resourceful’? Are artists resourceful? How does their resourcefulness manifest itself?

A.K.: We have tried to cooperate with scientific groups. We have failed though – what we’ve found missing was resourcefulness, or maybe the courage to leave the refuge of the school. It seems to me that many young people, not only artists, want too much too soon. They are burning out knocking on the door of prestigious institutions where they get submitted to authority, become small cogs in the machine. Or their resourcefulness consists in establishing as many contacts as possible in order to get support. They don’t follow what is going on in the world of art. They don’t see the opportunities offered by consolidation, by joint independent activity, by creating something new, something more. This kind of movement in art is absolutely necessary. The biggest problem that inhibits young artistic environment is its atomization.


M.H.Z.: When I was a student of the Academy of Fine Arts and observed other art students, I saw their specific state of ecstasy, their poses, and their vanity that resulted from the fact that they were studying this particular subject. When the time of graduation is approaching and the prosaic aspects of life cause more and more problems, it frequently turns out that it is too late for self-fulfillment, for gaining new experience. In no way does the curriculum prepare students to function efficiently on the art market. What’s more – very few teachers encourage students’ activity outside the academy, to join other initiatives, such as ours, say. In  order to meet the requirements of the market now a graduate of the Academy has to be an artists, but also a manager, an excellent observer of contemporary artistic and cultural life. Basically, this is where our work at the grass roots is necessary – activation of young artistic environment. Having worked for three years we can say that our projects are often joined by the same people. We managed to select a group of active, creative artists who have something to say and are very well organized.



Have you worked in international projects as well? And if you haven’t – do you plan to?
   
A.K.: We have already had international projects – two artists who were in Poland on a scholarship showed their works. I’m kidding, of course. Yes, sure we had such projects. Last year I worked in a museum in Helsinki, I brought many ideas and interesting contacts from there. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to use them so far. Oh well, step by step…Now we are opening to Poland. In this season we want to show more works by artists from places other than £ód¼. And as for the international plans, I am thinking about a programme of artistic residence. But to do this, cooperation of several actors is necessary – institutions, foundations. I welcome anyone interested. With workshops for children I would like to join a larger European project on design that has been running for three years now.


What are you working on at the moment?      

A.K.: We are preparing III Art Meetings ‘Aspekty’. In November we plan to start a discussion about the contemporary Polish poster with a project: “Poster. Academy vs. Street”  As a matter of fact, this will be the continuation of the issues raised in “Fresh Masters. Young Polish Poster”. The idea was born during an unofficial discussion during the exhibition. After ”Fresh Masters”, which were an academic review, we are going to show what is going on in the street. In our project we want to examine the division into the commercial street and the artistic gallery understood as a salon – an enclave in the deluge of superficiality. This year we invited a non-formal street-art group 3 Fala from Bielsko-Biała. We don’t want to repeat what the Art Museum showed during the exhibition “Beautiful Losers”. The 3F group has very clear profile, since 1998 they have been consistently developing socially committed projects. And for December we plan another edition of “Wyprzedaż sztuki uŻYWAnej”. And then more dialogues with urban space. This time we will try to find “Something optimistic” there. But it won’t be before spring.