ANDRZEJ TOBIS
A-Z (Educational Cabinets)-
1/9 unosunove arte contemporanea is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by the Polish artist Andrzej Tobis who will be presenting his new project entitled “A-Z Educational Cabinets“. This outstanding collection of images, presently on display at Kronika gallery, an important center for contemporary art in the heart of the industrial city of Bytom, Silesia, aroused such extraordinary interest that the artist has been invited to show the educational cabinets at the Polish Insitute in Berlin, for the 5th Berlin Biennale which will be inaugurated in April 2008.
Tobis reconstructs with pictures an illustrated Polish-German dictionary released in Leipzig in 1954 (Bildworterbuch Deutsch und Polnisch). With this project , the lexicon of Communist Germany is once again in use but placed within a modern context as each word or phrase is illustrated with a photograph of contemporary Poland. “I found this book very fascinating. This intentionally objective depiction of the whole world, was in fact a instrument used to forge a fake reality. Simply political propaganda, sometimes funny (from a contemporary point of view), sometimes fearful. Of course, there are a lot of ideologically neutral terms. It’s all a big mix. So, I decided to start this project – trying to use words and sentences from this 50 year old dictionary and fit them to pictures taken in Poland today and viceversa – trying to fit contemporary pictures to the words from this old dictionary” (Andrzej Tobis)
None of the images are pre-arranged or digitally altered. Each illustrated word is presented in an educational display cabinet whose form is inspired by cabinets common throughout public institutions such as schools, training centres, public hospitals and offices in Communist Poland. The 150 educational cabinets represent the first stage of a project that the artist will work on until he collects 300 images, which will then be published as a true illustrated dictionary.
Exhibition in collaboration with the Polish Institute in Rome.
For any further information please contact:
gallery@unosunove.com