The exhibition ‘Horror Desire Fantasy’ brings together works made by Agnieszka Polska from 2014 to the present. The selection highlights her use of found images and computer-generated media to reflect on the individual and their social responsibility. She renders the ethical and societal challenges of our time through immersive, meditative films and installations with a palpable emotional resonance. Often constructed from affective sound and visual stimuli, her works examine processes of influence and legitimation in the fields of language, consciousness and history.
At the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), visitors will encounter Polska’s work in different parts of the brutalist building, which dates from 1967. On their non-linear journey through the exhibition, viewers will be able to depart from the micro scale of bodily sensation, only to arrive at the scene of a global or cosmic event. Global events and processes such as climate change, the rise of nationalism, and developments in communication and surveillance networks are the result of infinite micro-events, responsibilities, and conditions. ‘Horror Desire Fantasy’ will also invite viewers onto the streets of the Lithuanian capital, allowing them to learn from one such micro-event: that of the wayward pigeon.
Among the works by Agnieszka Polska to be shown at the CAC are the single-channel videos The Book of Flowers and The Red River. The video installation The Thousand-Year Plan will also be on view, alongside Braudel’s Clocks and Glass of Petrol. In addition, the city-wide project Wayward Pigeon will be included in the exhibition.
The exhibition is curated by Maria Lind.
More information coming soon.
AGNIESZKA POLSKA (b. 1985, based in Berlin) is a visual artist and film director whose computer-generated works reflect on individuals and their social responsibility within information-driven environments. Her work has been presented internationally, including at the New Museum and MoMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC. Solo exhibitions have been held at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Nottingham Contemporary; and Saltzburger Kunstverein, among others. She has participated in the 57th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 19th and 24th Biennale of Sydney, the 14th Shanghai Biennale, and the 13th Istanbul Biennial. In 2018, she was awarded the German Preis der Nationalgalerie.
MARIA LIND is a curator, writer and educator from Stockholm. She is currently director of Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna. From 2020 to 2023, she served as counsellor of culture at the Embassy of Sweden in Moscow. She was director of Stockholm’s Tensta konsthall (2011–18), artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008–2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005–2007). From 2002 to 2004, she was director of Kunstverein München, and in 1998, co-curator of Europe’s itinerant biennial, Manifesta 2, in Luxembourg. In 2015, she curated ‘Future Light’ for the first Vienna Biennale, and in 2019, she co-curated the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara. She has taught widely since the early 1990s, including as professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo (2015–18) and as a lecturer at Konstfack’s CuratorLab (2014–2024). She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. In 2009, she received the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In 2010, Selected Maria Lind Writing was published by Sternberg Press, followed by Seven Years: The Rematerialization of Art from 2011 to 2017 in 2019. In 2021, Konstringar: Vad gör samtidskonsten? was published by Natur & Kultur. Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden (2021) and The New Model (2020) are two publications reflecting long-term projects at Tensta konsthall, both published by the art centre and Sternberg Press.