Agnieszka Polska’s first solo exhibition "Flowers on the Sun" opened on 21 September 2024 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp. In her works, the artist oscillates around the issues of the entanglement of past and future, time as a non-linear entity and systems involving human and non-human beings (plants, animals, machines). The exhibition has been prepared in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
“Flowers on the Sun” – the first solo exhibition of Agnieszka Polska’s works in Belgium
Agnieszka Polska is an artist specialising in visual arts. Her video works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, where she was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2018. Her works place emphasis on historical events and global processes, such as technological change and climate crisis. She uses computer-generated animated images to reflect on individual and social responsibility and the ethical ambiguity of our times. Her works take the form of films, video installations and sculptures.
“Flowers on the Sun” is the first solo exhibition of Agnieszka Polska’s works in Belgium. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium’s leading institution focusing on the avant-garde movement and open to international art, is presenting a selection of the artist’s latest works. The focal points are the films: “The Book of Flowers” (2023) and “The New Sun” (2020). A series of sculptures titled “The Braudel’s Clocks” (2022) complements the exhibition.
Agnieszka Polska, “The Book of Flowers” still, 2023.
“Flowers on the Sun” – an exhibition of sculptures and videos asking questions about the perception of time and history
The unifying theme of Agnieszka Polska’s works making up the exhibition “Flowers on the Sun” is the perception of time and history: non-linearity and the inextricable entanglement of past and future. This motif is particularly evident in “The Braudel's Clocks” series of sculptures, reflecting the idea of unified time as a social construct and the world as a complex set of structures evolving at different speeds.
Based on speculative narratives with science-fiction elements, the artist also emphasises the importance of the formation of relationships between human beings, non-human beings and technology. She explores these issues in two short films presented at the exhibition. The film “The Book of Flowers” (2023) was created using tools based on artificial intelligence. Working on it, the artist used stop-motion animation from the 1950s depicting flowers, which she then transformed into images generated by artificial intelligence. The video presents an alternative history of humans and plants. Agnieszka Polska weaves a narrative about the proximity of the two species living in an unprecedented symbiosis on a planetary scale for millennia.
On the other hand, the film “The New Sun” (2020) focuses on the character of the Sun: a star with a baby face and a beautiful voice. In this half-sung, poetic monologue, the Sun presents a grim vision of a collapsing world in which the only lasting and unchanging elements are words and language. Although the overall atmosphere of the film is dark, the eclectic monologue, which also finds room for elements of stand-up, leaves space for hope and emphasises the importance of words as tools of social responsibility.
Agnieszka Polska, "Braudel's Clock – Octopus and Butterfly", 2023 © Galeria Dawid Radziszewski
The exhibition will be open from 21 September 2024 to 12 January 2025. The exhibition is organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and with the support of the Polish Institute in Brussels.