Meno Parkas Gallery is kindly inviting You to one of the closing events of „Kaunas – European capital of Culture 2022“ – exhibition by Filip Markiewicz “Ultrasocial Pop” presenting a series of works dedicated to the analysis of European Culture. Curator of the exhibition Christian Mosar.

▶ Opening of the exhibition will take place at 5pm on the 25^th of November (Friday) in Meno Parkas Gallery (Rotuses sq. 27, Kaunas).

▶ On 26^th of November (Saturday) at 1pm in Meno Parkas Gallery (Rotuses sq. 27, Kaunas) will take place the presentation of exhibition catalogue and discusion with the exhibition artist F. Markiewicz and curator C. Mosar (The event will be held in English).

The idea behind the installation project is an analysis of the history and current development of society through the composition and deconstruction of the words “Ultra”, “Social” and “Pop”. The word "social" has a special meaning in art history, it is a direct reference to the concept of social sculpture by Joseph Beuys and thus a questioning of the place of politics in art. The word "pop" is a direct reference to pop culture and the flare-up of consumer society (Jean Baudrillard) since the 1950s. However, the contraction of these words also leads to a new definition of the word "pop" (people), the idea of ultra-social pop culture is also reflecting the word "populism" which is prevalent in our society today. The prefix "ultra" is mostly used these days to denote extreme political movements (ultra-left, ultra-right), but it also refers directly to the word "ultraviolence", which is a kind of repetitive gimmick in Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess) is used. Ultrasocial Pop is a type of bogus political campaign strategy that uses slogans, logos, and images. The main aim, however, is to shed light on how these contemporary propaganda systems work.

The installation is a development of the project and will be a conceptual staging of a vinyl LP album (produced by Bourse Bert-Theis, edited by Grzegorzki Records), which consists of pieces composed and edited especially for the occasion. These pieces are translated into the exhibition space by various installation groups made for the occasion. Translating the concept of Ultrasocial Pop into an installation will be a constant play between the different variations that these words can evoke. A new series of drawings and oil paintings will be realized, inspired by the most recent social conflicts and translated into an abstract, surrealistic form of contemporary mythology.

A series of installations of architectural models will form a macroscopic idea of an utopian idea of the city of the future confronted with its own history (a dialogue between Roberto Rosselini's Berlin "Germania Anno Zero" and the futuristic metropolis "Metropolis" Fritz Lang). With a series of new sculptures (Protest Sculptures), the exhibition rooms will be turned into a stage design that will accommodate a sound performance that will interact with the installation space of Ultrasocial Pop. The basic theme of this project is a survey of representative democracy in 2021 after the protest movements using the slogans "We are the people", "Power to the people" and the questioning of the social value of a work of art in this era. The French philosopher Jacques Rancière says that representative democracy does not initially come from the people, but rather from a higher class. The Ultrasocial Pop project will not be a political activism project, but rather a think tank that will analyze the existing links between the political world, the society of the spectacle, and social movements through the prism of popular poetry.

The Ultrasocial Pop project is a direct continuation of Filip Markiewicz's Celebration Factory project, which was produced for Casino Luxembourg - Contemporary Art Forum, CCA Derry-Londonderry, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, and Theater Basel. A catalog was published by Hatje Cantz for the occasion in 2020. Filip Markiewicz has already presented the work in progress of Ultrasocial pop in various forms, in January 2020 in a video live performance in the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, in October 2020 in his staging of Antigone Neuropa as part of the Lausitz Festival with the ensemble of the Staatstheater Cottbus. In February 2021 at the Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin live from Musée du Louvre. In November 2021, the project will also be shown as an installation at the MUDAM Contemporary Museum in Luxembourg, in the frame of the group show Freigeister.

FILIP MARKIEWICZ (* 1980, Esch an der Alzette, Luxembourg) is a Polish-Luxembourg visual artist who expresses himself through various media such as drawing, painting, music, video and installation. Filip Markiewicz represented Luxembourg at the 56th Venice Biennale 2015 with the Paradiso Lussemburgo project (Sternberg Press Verlag catalog). His long-term project Celebration Factory on contemporary Europe began in 2016 at the NN Contemporary Art Northampton and at the Theater Basel before it was continued in 2018 at the Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'Art Contemporain and in 2019 at the Center for Contemporary Art Derry-Londonderry and the Kunsthalle Osnabrück (catalog Hatje Cantz Verlag). In 2017 Markiewicz staged his performance Fake Fiction with diary texts by Oskar Schlemmer (publication Hyde Éditions) at Theater Basel for the official Art Basel program. Markiewicz received the Art Prize Bourse Bert-Theis in 2019 for his art music project Ultrasocial Pop. In 2020 his theater film project Fake Fiction was presented for the Rencontres Internationales festival at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. In the same year Markiewicz shows his monographic exhibition Ultraplastik Rhapsody at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. In february 2021 Filip Markiewicz presented the performance « Ultrasocial Pop » in the frame of the Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin at the Audiorium du Louvre (F). Filip Markiewicz has been composing music for film, theater and installation under the name RAFTSIDE since 1999, with which he has also appeared in several international festivals.

www.filipmarkiewicz.com | www.raftside.com

The exhibition is a part program of Kaunas - Capital for Culture 2022.
Partners of the exhibition: Kaunas 2022 European Capital of Culture; Esch2022 European Capital of Culture. 

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