Starting point for the exhibition “The Use of Every Sunbeam” is the artistic work of Polish filmmaker Julian Antonisz. In Communist Poland, Antonisz was a controversial figure. His economic use of materials and technical inventions in their sometimes absurd ingenuity resulted from an ironic observation of socialist reality. Instead of distanced criticism, Antonisz developed an affirmative position, based on the acceptance of what was actually in question. His works analyzed the dominant discourse without having to dissociate themselves from it. In fact, the works subversively presented a poetic alternative in midst a socialist reality. 

At Künstlerhaus Stuttgart the work by Julian Antonisz will be confronted with works by younger artists. The presented artists Anca Benera (Romania), Jakup Ferri (Kosovo), Ahmet Ögüt (Turkey) and Janek Simon (Poland) are part of a generation of artists from Central and Eastern Europe who have obtained international recognition over the past years. Their works often react to the pressures of transformation, which have been weighing down on social contexts in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and yet produce new alternatives but also new constraints.

The exhibition is curated by Magdalena Lipska, a fellow of the Robert Bosch Foundation in the program “Cultural Managers from Central and Eastern Europe.”

Kindly supported by

Events in the context of the exhibition:

Thursday, September 18, 7pm: Polish School of Experimental Animation, film program

Tuesday, September 23, 7pm: Conceptual and Postconceptual Art in Eastern Europe, lecture by Miško Šuvakovic