Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun (CoCA) presents Dreams of Reason
Highlights of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection an exhibition on view 5 April–19 May 2013.
The exhibition dedicated to the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection opens yet another perspective to the desire and urge to collect which, more than the creation of a set of extraordinary artworks, can be seen as a way of framing a particular historical moment. This moment could be called the “Turn of the Century”, as well as in many other ways, but it is definitely that sequence of political, social or economical turbulences that shook the world in the last twenty years. Started at the beginning of the 90s and, since then, progressively growing, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection has evolved as a lucid and vehement view on this historical period in all its complexity and incongruity. It has embraced the spirit of criticality and engagement of current artistic practices, and has laid particular attention to discourses which dealt with the social position of women, environmental urgencies and with the effects of globalisation.
It is the collection’s history and its range that constitutes the departure point for the journey on which the exhibition at CoCA Torun wishes to take its audience: a voyage through a multitude of cultural contexts and their transformations over the last two decades. The exhibition, as a journey through a variety of intersected visual narratives composed by some of the leading international artists, offers a kaleidoscopic picture of a contemporary world: a world taken over by cultural clashes, decay of the natural environment and an increasing sense of powerlessness of the individual. Through this show, CoCA seeks to present not only one extraordinary collection of contemporary art, but an “array” of worldviews by artists who have embraced engagement and criticality as the dominant tone of their artistic position. It’s a position that art perpetuated many times from the Romantic period till today, as Goya’s prophetic piece The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters reminds us. There is distress and awe in today’s art, but also the sense of humour and hope which this exhibition wishes to underline, portraying the world of today not only as a place dominated by conflicts and fears, but also as a place of positive visions which art is capable of creating. Thus it’s the journey through the “Dreams of Reason” that the audience should undertake through this exhibition, which brings together some of the masterpieces of contemporary art belonging to the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection.
Artists: Doug Aitken, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Paul Chan, Maurizio Cattelan, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Liz Glynn, Thomas Hirschhorn, Piotr Janas, William Kentridge, Robert Kuśmirowski, Yong-Baek Lee, Sherry Levine, Sharon Lockhart, Sarah Lucas, Paul McCarthy, Aleksandra Mir, Shirin Neshat, Paulina Olowska, Sergey Sapozhnikov and Albert Pogorelkin, Wael Shawky
Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun
Waly gen. Sikorskiego 13
87-100 Torun, Poland
csw.torun.pl