1972
Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Poland

This exhibition presented six conceptual artists from Hungary in Warsaw. The show was full of subtle political overtones and cultivated a kind of doublespeak that was hard to decipher for the uninitiated. This provoked objections from the side of the gallery and one of its administrators. The exhibition is also a good example of the gray zone that existed between between state-run art institutions, on the one hand, and self-organized initiatives, on the other.

Foksal Gallery was run by the Workshop of Plastic Arts (Pracownia Sztuk Płastycznych, PSP)–a state agency–but it was directed by a group of progressive artists and critics that included Wiesław Borowski and Tadeusz Kantor, among others. Foksal’s international program generally focused on a depoliticized, universalizing brand of conceptual art.