Konrad Pustoła (1975–2015) was one of the most captivating photographers from the Transformation Generation, and yet, his oeuvre has not been presented as a retrospective so far. The Disappear by the Vistula exhibition constitutes a draft for such a show and at the same time, it creates an opportunity to rethink the issues addressed by the artist in the contemporary contexts.
We present Pustoła’s body of work as a practice developed at the intersection of three important problems. The aspect remaining in the very center is topography and the condition of the landscape which emerges from the economic and political processes shaping the landscape of contemporaneity. The second issue is the question about the potential of photography as a means to capture these processes, as well as the critical, in-depth insight into reality.
An economist by profession, Konrad Pustoła continued his education first at the Lodz Film School and later, at the Royal College of Art in London. His comprehensive education was reflected in the multi-dimensional approach adopted by the creative who would combine his skills as a professional photographer with artistic sensibility and enormous attention to the economic processes.
‘I try to take photographs that will not turn irrelevant the next day. I would like the material, I am currently working on, to be as relevant in ten years as it is today, or perhaps even more substantial than now – due to its documentary character,’ declared the photographer.
Pustoła’s work is also a story about Poland. Although the artist carried out several projects abroad, the Polish landscape occupies a privileged position in his oeuvre. It is the landscape of a country in transition, a case study of globalization processes, a chessboard on which the forces of capital play their game, an area where tradition wrestles with the elements of modernization, producing new, hybrid forms of culture. This is where one of the sources of Pustoła’s work is to be searched for: in his photographs, we can find the reality, in which we live today, though captured in the process of its shaping.
Text: Stach Szabłowski
Konrad Pustoła – „Dissapear by the Vistula”
Curator: Stach Szabłowski
Artists: Konrad Pustoła and Marta Bogdańska, Karolina Ćwik, Lena Dobrowolska, Jan Jurczak, Agnieszka Karolina Jurek, Keymo, Tytus Szabelski, Aleksandra Wieliczko
Exhibition open: 26.09.2024–5.01.2025
Opening: 25.09.2024, 6–8 pm
Production: Tomasz Gutkowski, Karolina Wójcik, Renata Zawartka
Visual identification: Pilar Rojo
Scenography: Michał Sroka
Arrangement and assembly: Bartek Buczek, Zofia Kerneder, Kinga Olesiejuk
Multimedia: Maciej Bernaś, Paweł Potok
Organizers: Foundation for Visual Arts / Krakow Photomonth and Contemporary Art Gallery Bunkier Sztuki
Illustration: Konrad Pustoła, untitled, from the series “Disappear by the Vistula”, 2009