KwieKulik i konceptualizm w uwarunkowaniach PRL-u. Przyczynek do analizy problemu
KwieKulik and Conceptualism in the People's Republic of Poland (PRL). A Contribution to the Problem Analysis

Summary/Abstract: Until now, the artistic practices of a duo named KwieKulik, founded between 1971-1987 by Przemysław Kwiek and Zofia Kulik, were placed outside of conceptual art. I am not presenting here a simple thesis that KwieKulik were conceptual artists, but I attempt to formulate an introductory question about the complex relationship in which they situated themselves in response to conceptualism. In one of the interviews, the artists claimed that they could never be ‘pure conceptual artists’. I wonder, however, if the activity of the duo may be framed in a category of some ‘impure conceptualism’ whose important aspect is to be found in exposing the conditions of life and work in the People's Republic of Poland . To achieve this one needs to investigate thoroughly the artists stance towards the hegemonic term of ‘conceptualism’ whilst highlighting all of their actions that had any conceptual feature and to define a specific, individual form which appeared in the network of relationships with other elements of artistic practice. In my text I explain how one should understand ‘conceptualism’ as ‘a hegemonic term’ that organises and imposes itself onto an agonistic field of innovative art practices — not only in the West, but also in Poland. In this context, undertaking the question of “KwieKulik and conceptualism” opens a new perspective for a counter-hegemonic reinterpretation of conceptualism in the People's Republic of Poland. Without rejecting the term ‘conceptualism’, one needs to look at the questions related to it through the prism of an individual case of the KwieKulik duo. It should also allow the practices of both artists to make an imprint on ‘conceptualism’. In the last part of my text, I limit myself to a series of ‘contributive’ notes which may be treated as orientation points in an appropriate analysis of the conceptual aspects of the art of KwieKulik.

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