Formy nikłe. Ludmiła Popiel & Jerzy Fedorowicz

opening: 13.09. 7-9 PM

exhibition: 14.09 - 9.11.2018

curators: Marika Kuźmicz, Łukasz Mojsak

collaboration: Agnieszka Popiel

design: Katarzyna Rzepka


The exhibition Faint Forms (Formy nikłe) presents the work of a pair of artists, Ludmiła Popiel (1929–1988) and Jerzy Fedorowicz (1929–2018), offering an exceptional example of their cooperation and understanding which endured and grew over decades.

Popiel and Fedorowicz signed most of their works separately, but over the perspective of time it is clearly visible that their projects constituted a distinct visual, intellectual and nonverbal dialogue.

In the 1960s their main field of creativity was painting, but later, about 1970, the artists turned toward conceptualism. In addition to the issue of cooperation, the exhibition is devoted to this turning point. This change can be observed in works from the 1960s and 1970s from the home archive of Popiel and Fedorowicz—a shift from works they referred to as “visual games” toward ephemeral projects raising questions of the role of art, the status of the work, and the legitimacy of accenting their own authorship.

From about 1965 canvases appeared relying on effects of optical illusions—series in which the artists, striving toward the objectification of art, sought to appeal more to the physiology of the human sense of sight, rather than emotions, associations or intuitions. Popiel also explored then issues of motion and space. In creating the series Labyrinths (Labirynty), she subordinated colour to rhythm by multiplying bands of hues, later introducing phosphorescent colours, which intensified the illusion of movement and blinking. During the same period Fedorowicz was working on Compositions (Kompozycje), also painted following defined rules. The repeating motif is basic geometrical forms of the circle and the square, which “disappear” and “appear” to our vision thanks to the techniques applied by the artist.

Around 1970 Popiel and Fedorowicz radicalized their approach, concentrating on questions of the essence of art. Paintings like Record—Physical Structure of the Painting (Zapis – fizyczna struktura obrazu) date to that era: conceptual, self-reflective works, heralding a period when the artists would take up a conceptual game with the issue of authorship and individuality in art, and begin to sign their works as joint projects.

The title of the exhibition, Faint Forms (Formy nikłe), alludes to the scenario for another presentation by the pair of artists, ultimately unrealized, which was intended as a manifestation of their stance and their belief in the overproduction of works of art. (Fedorowicz and Popiel abandoned their work on the project when martial law was introduced in Poland in 1981.)

The exhibition anticipates the publication of the first monograph devoted to the work of Ludmiła Popiel and Jerzy Fedorowicz, scheduled for 2019.