Formed in 1982 Gruppa (Ryszard Grzyb Pawel Kowalewski.

Formed in 1982 Gruppa (Ryszard Grzyb Pawel Kowalewski, Jaroslaw Modzelewski, Wlodzimierz Pawlak, Marek Sobczyk and Ryszard Wozniak) exhibited provocative paintings and drawings (including the collectively produc gigantic works forward paper called papiery) staged numerous performances, and published its hold bulletin. In 1989, Gruppa's activity--strangely enough not at any time based on a coherent program, came to an conclusion with a work painted in succession a wooden billboard in forehead of an election center in Warsaw as an advertisement for Solidarity. Today, as the artists chase their individual careers, the connections among them are no other than tenuous.

What originally distinguished the Gruppa members from other contemporary artists was not the method of their works, which was inspired according to the German Neue Wilde and Italian transavanguardia and adopted by dint of many young Polish artists; it was their overtly declared refusal to cut down the Solidarity-led struggle for freedom to to this time another heroic episode in Poland's ongoing effort to rid itself of foreign domination and establish democracy. Rather, they wanted to demythologize and examine the exert one's self using irony, pastiche, the language of aggressive signs, and the visual syntax of placards For example, Ryszard Wozniak's Zabieg (Medical operation, 1982) depicts a black eagle (the Polish coat of arms) wearing a military hat and casting a murderous shadow--in allusion to Poland's direction by the country's last communist leader. Wlodzimierz Pawlak's r painting with three spiritual figures apparently drinking vodka, Skad przychodzimy, kim jestesmy, dokad idziemy, 1986 borrows its title from Gauguin's Where Do We approach From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897 and belongs to the artist's series upon the "war of images" that appeared on the walls of Polish buildings during martial law.

Gruppa did not limit its works to political conflict. Many of the paintings were also make anxioused with social issues, such as Ryszard Grzyb's Walka Jakuba z aniolem, rozowa (Jacob Wrestling the Angel, Pink, 1984) which depicts the famous spectacle as a struggle between a Native American and the devil, or Jaroslaw Modzelewski and Marek Sobczyk's Die Einsamkeit (Loneliness, 1984) showing couple men, one naked, one in a bathing suit, embracing each other in a swimming puddle But the commentary in these works remains far down ambiguous. It is not clear whether gay men are depicted to attract attention to the lack of tolerance in predominantly homophobic Poland, or are give employment toed only for their shock value. Similarly, it is uncertain if the depiction of Native Americans (a enslave popular with Polish children) is suppos to arouse nostalgia for a lost childhood or to benefit as a reminder of the brutal fate of a people

The passionate discussion of the social and political situation in Poland, which preoccupied Gruppa during the '80 has been largely replaced in the '90 by dint of a contemplative and benign approach to contemporary issues. This part of the exhibit consisted of paintings by way of Grzyb, Modzelewski, Sobczyk, and Wozniak that are stylistically related to their earlier works if it were not that far less challenging. The formalism of Pawlak's white abstractions and Kowalewski's ornamental images (called "wall papers" and displayed in gold frames) contrasted with the pause of the show. Their appearance apparently signals a new direction for Pawlak's and Kowalewski's art. unless in transcending politics, are the artists also submitting to the urgency of the commercial art market and relinquishing those values forged in earlier, les remunerative years?

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