Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr will present in CCA Laznia their classic artworks including Victimless Leather, Semi-Living Worry Dolls, Pig Wings Project along with a new work - Crude Substrate - conceived especially for the Gdansk exhibition. The show will also feature a documentation of the unique performance Remains of a Disembodied Cuisine (Berlin 2005), during which the artists and members of the audience feasted on meat made of muscle tissue incubated from stem cells of a sheep that had died several years prior to the event. The exhibition of Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr raises particularly important questions about bio-ethics, genetic engineering and bio-technology. On the one hand artists focus on the huge possibilities of modern science, on the other hand they reveal our unconscious prejudices and taboo disclosing when we are confronted with issues of life and technological operations performed on the organic matter. 

Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr are among the most eminent bio-art representatives. Bio-art is a branch combining art with tools and practices characteristic for biological laboratory. In 1996 they started the Tissue Culture & Art Project in The University of Western Austria, which aimed to expand the cooperation between artists and scientists working with organic matter. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr create installations and objects using lab-incubated organic tissue. They also partly turn gallery space into an improvised bio lab.

Catts and Zurr call the objects they create Semi-Living by using this term they question the notion of life in accordance to artificially grown tissue - seemingly undergoing biological processes but unable to neither survive independently nor spread into complex organic forms.

Crude life will be shown also in Warsaw in Copernicus Science Centre (June 2012)

Wystawa Orona Cattsa i Ioanat Zurr organizowana jest w ramach Art&Science Meeting i stanowi kontynuację projektu, jaki CSW Łaźnia we współpracy z Narodowym Centrum Kultury zainicjowało w 2011 roku. Na projekt składają się wystawy prezentujące najwybitniejszych światowych artystów współpracujących z naukowcami bądź operujących na styku nauki i sztuki. Wystawy z cyklu Art&Science Meeting 2012 zestawią ze sobą czołowych artystów zajmujących się życiem i procesami biologicznymi, ale podchodzących do tych zagadnień ze skrajnie odmiennej perspektywy. Projektowi wystawienniczemu towarzyszą publikacje, międzynarodowe konferencje naukowe, wykłady i artykuły publikowane na stronie internetowej projektu (www.artandscience.pl) oraz warsztaty tematyczne dla młodzieży.

Art&Science Meeting 2012 is a follow up of a project initiated in 2011 by Laznia CCA and the National Centre for Culture. The project consists of exhibitions presenting the most prominent art representatives. The project initiated is concerned with on different aspects of cooperation between artists and scientist, and between the culture of exact sciences and humanities. The exhibitions are accompanied by publications, panel discussions, lectures and articles published on the project’s website (www.artandscience.pl) and workshops for youth. Laznia CCA is highlighting the position of contemporary art in social and intellectual life of the modern world.

Art&Science Meeting project aims at creating a collaborative network between Laznia CCA and academic centres – Gdansk University of Technology, Medical University of Gdansk, Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Academy of Music in Gdansk, and Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw. The project is an important step forward in building interdisciplinary research and creative teams of scientists, artists and students of academic centers mentioned above.

The artists involved in the project stress that a creative attitude tolerates no boundaries, nor limitations of oneself within a narrow specialization. There is a strong emphasis on involving in the project not only Laznia CCA but also scientists working at Gdansk University of Technology, students of University and Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Thanks to cooperation with Copernicus Science Centre, we are hoping to attract a new audience to the centre for contemporary art.


http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/
http://www.tcaproject.org/

Artistic director of the project and the curator of the exhibition: prof. Ryszard Kluszczyński, PhD

Project coordinator: Krzysztof Miękus

Exhibition’s co-organiser: Copernicus Science Centre

Project Art & Science Meeting is organized and intiated by: Laznia CCA

Partners:
SymbioticA – The Centre of Excellence in Biological Art
The University of Western Australia
Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology UG-MUG
Gdansk University of Technology
Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw
National Centre for Culture
Merck Sp. z o.o.

 
Honoraty Patrons:
Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, Bogdan Zdrojewski
Marshal of the Pomorskie Voivodeship, Mieczysław Struk
Mayor of the City of Gdansk, Paweł Adamowicz
Australian Embassy in Warsaw
Austrian Embassy in Warsaw

Media Patrons:
„Gazeta Wyborcza”, TVP Kultura, Swiatobrazu.pl, Poka Poka Trójmiasto, „Artysta i Sztuka”, „Art & Business”, „Arteon”, o.pl, „Purpose — kultura, nauka, przedsiębiorczość”, Radio Gdańsk, Trójmiasto.pl