Gas chamber artwork pulled from Berlin show
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
18.10.2011 10:09
A controversial work by one of Poland's most internationally acclaimed artists has been pulled from an exhibition in Berlin, following complaints from a prominent member of the city's Jewish community.
Game of Tag
“Game of Tag”, by Artur Zmijewski, is a three-minute film that shows a group of people playing in a cellar, followed by a second game in the gas chamber of a former Nazi death camp.
The wide-ranging exhibition, “Side by Side, Poland – Germany: A 1000 Years of Art and History,” is being held at the Martin Gropius Bau under the joint patronage of the presidents Bronislaw Komorowski and Christian Wulff.
Containing over 500 works chosen by Polish curator Anda Rottenberg, the show comes under the auspices of Poland's presidency of the EU.
Zmijewski is known for his uncompromising style. Earlier this year, the American edition of Newsweek proclaimed him one of the ten most important artists in the world today, saying that his harrowing videos “reveal life's brutal truths.”
Whilst acknowledging that the artist's works are often painfully hard to watch, the magazine stressed that “they are also profound and important and even humane, in the same way Goya's brutalities are.” (nh/pg)
Source: WAW