EDWARD DWURNIK. PRIDE AND SHAME

Dwurnik appears as an artist who, with his own insight and irony, explored the identity, cultural and psychological consequences of this leap, to which he was also subject. Thus the exhibition Edward Dwurnik. Pride and Shame suggests reading the artist's work from the perspective of the history of social emotions in Poland in the second half of the 20th century. Especially the constant clash of the two affections that organize the experience of the transformation of the class social structure: pride and shame. These emotions go far beyond the sphere of private experiences, because they regulate belonging, recognition and place in the social hierarchy, they even determine the feeling of value or worthlessness of one's own existence and identity.

In Dwurnik's paintings of the 70s, 80s and 90s, both these emotions constantly return, they are present in events, stories and images fighting for recognition of the character. Without recognizing this emotional genealogy of social life, it is difficult to understand the sources of resentments and conflicts that shape the contemporary Polish political imagination and constitute the sources of contemporary populisms.

Edward Dwurnik's exhibition is accompanied by an artistic intervention by Patryk Różycki's Transformation. This is a selection of his works from 2021-2024. The series of paintings deals with the childhood and adolescence of the artist in the countryside in the economic and social exclusion associated with the transformation of the 90s.