Edward Krasiński, 'Retrospective', 1984

Installation, Level 12

As an "exhibition copy", Edward Krasiński's "Retrospective" is part of a spatial installation on the 12th floor of the Erste Campus. In a visual sense, this installation is characterized first and foremost by a length of blue tape that, in accordance with Krasiński’s conceptual framework, runs along the window façade without interruption at a height of 130 cm, thereby integrating several of his photographic works.

This off-the-shelf tape, which Krasiński made famous (as “Scotch tape”) in the context of 20thcentury art history, was used for the first time by him during the 1960s in a village near Warsaw, where he applied it to trees and fences—and he went on to apply it to apartments, entire exhibitions, and buildings in other locations. Up to and beyond Krasiński’s death, the blue tape has remained a symbolic marker that adds a further, idealized dimension to the territory that it demarcates, regardless of that territory’s original functional purpose. The exactly linear path followed by the blue tape at a consistently uniform height allows it to function as a mental standard relative to which all undertakings and processes that develop over time within its enclosure can be measured. Edward Krasiński thought of the blue line as an observer both of changing phenomena and of time’s passage, and he would use it to mark a given place as a place of art. In this, he also made clear how art has an ability that is unique among all media: that of sharpening its recipients’ perception of reality.

Edward Krasiński was born in Łuck, Ukraine in 1925. In 1954, he moved to Warsaw, where he lived and worked up to his death in 2004. Krasiński worked as a sculptor, painter, and creator of both installations and happenings. His artistic doings made him one of the most important exponents of the Eastern European avant-garde during the second half of the 20^th century. Several of his most important works are held by Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation. His output has been shown at important international exhibitions and venues including Tate Modern in London, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art in Krakow, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Basel, Vienna’s Generali Foundation, the Foksal Foundation in Warsaw, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Text: Kathrin Rhomberg & Pierre Bal-Blanc