Polyphony of Images - A Night of Cutting-Edge Contemporary Art from Poland: Video, Performance, and Other Media

Polyphony of Images – A Night of Cutting-Edge Contemporary Art from Poland: Video, Performance, and Other Media, curated by Monika Fabijanska, art historian and director of the Polish Cultural Institute, will present the works of over 30 of Poland’s best contemporary artists on three floors of New York’s magnificent gem of Beaux-Arts style architecture, the De Lamar Mansion at 37th and Madison.

The viewer will be able to explore the labyrinth of the mansion’s elegant rooms and find works by Poland’s best-known artists as well as many emerging talents. Some of the artists, many of whom will be present, live and work in Poland, while others have become New Yorkers. This unique survey will include video, objects, drawings, paintings, installations, and performance. Many of the works have never been shown in New York.

This one-night exhibition is one of nine consecutive evenings that make up the De Lamar Mansion Centennial Salon of Arts & Ideas at the Consulate General of Poland in New York. This multi-media program, running from October 14 to 22, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the mansion that is now home to the Polish Consulate, a residence built 1906 by architect C.P.H. Gilbert for copper tycoon Joseph Raphael De Lamar, and which later housed the National Democratic Club for 50 years before the Polish government purchased it in 1973.

The De Lamar Mansion Centennial Salon of Arts & Ideas both celebrates the mansion’s centennial and honors New York as a mecca for creative people. It features, in the course of its nine evenings, a host of artists and intellectuals, from filmmaker David Lynch, jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, and Academy Award winning composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek to playwright Janusz Glowacki, New York Times Writer-at-Large Roger Cohen, and writer Lawrence Weschler, director of the NY Institute for the Humanities and the Chicago Humanities
Festival.The grand finale is a public architectural projection on the building’s façade by the L.A.-based multi-media artist and independent projection designer Bart Kresa.