Program

The beginning of the year is a time when two collections can be seen at the same time at the Krupa Art Foundation. Until the summer of 2024, we will be showing works from the Krupa Collection (created by founders Sylwia and Piotr Krupa), which was the first exhibition at the Foundation’s new seat in the Market Square in Wrocław. The Sharp Smell of Flowers, on the other hand, will be the first presentation of selected works from the KAF Collection, which focuses on assembling a collection of young, current art.

The Sharp Smell of Flowers is a polyphonic overview of oneiric explorations. In a time of anxiety – when the body tries to find solace, often by balancing between the real and the magical – young artists examine the tenderness of the human soul and body. The exhibition will explore themes of appearances and misguided gestures, intimacy, tensions and the need for a safe haven. The featured works ask post-pandemic questions about belonging, family relations, cultural and social relationships, and emotional and physical oppression of vulnerable or excluded individuals. The title of the exhibition has been borrowed from a poem by Halina Poświatowska, for whom corporeality, tenderness and nature intertwined to create a romantic tale of slow death, which the poet faced throughout her short life due to an incurable illness. This tragic but often ambiguous tale is permeated by a kind of acceptance of the natural order and awareness of being its part, resulting from her sense that the environment and nature were superior to technology and alienation, which is increasingly rare today. In the case of Poświatowska’s poem, the nature provides the setting for a bittersweet tale of anxiety – it may be vague and not fully understood, yet it securely envelops the body.

Artists: Diego Ballestrasse, Jędrzej Bieńko, Anna Grochowska, Veronika Hapchenko, Veronika Ivashkevich, Maja Janczar, Bartosz Kowal, Julia Kowalska, Øleg&Kaśka, Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Patryk Staruch