MEETINGS: „Art as Escape / Escape from Art". A performative lecture by Małgorzata Halber

The event will be interpreted into Polish Sign Language (PJM).

The exhibition I Am Elsewhere provides a starting point for a discussion of art often described as “outsider art.” Is it truly possible to escape what Jean Dubuffet—the painter and creator of the canonical Art Brut collection—called “cultural art,” meaning art shaped by academic and gallery institutions?
The very terminology used to describe art from “outside” is problematic. In Polish, it is also referred to by the even more disparaging term “primitive art.” None of these labels were chosen by the artists themselves.
The lecture will focus on the frequently overlooked aesthetic questions surrounding Art Brut, as well as intersecting taxonomic issues—who is and who is not considered an Art Brut artist—and ethical concerns, such as who has the right to profit from works by artists who may be unaware of their value on the collectors’ market. Yet do these issues not apply to all artists? Is the escape into art not a common denominator of the artistic impulse, and what implications does this have for developing modern definitions of art?
The performative section will invite the audience to discover both impulses within themselves at once: the escape into art—into fantasy and away from reality—and the escape from art as something rigid, institutionalized, and governed by rules. Both impulses exist within the same person, usually at the same time.

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Series of events accompanying Warsaw Gallery Weekend MEETINGS, co-financed by the City of Warsaw and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage with the support of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts.