Distortions of Reflection. Catalogue from the exhibition

The book “Distortions of Reflection, Reflections of Distortion” is a catalogue of the exhibition under the same title, which was held at the City Museum of Wrocław, 18th July – 15th November, 2020.

As we can read in the preface of the catalogue, “The exhibition presented Oskar Zięta’s oeuvre along with his latest projects in the context of the Classical/Baroque interiors of the Royal Palace in Wrocław. Zięta installed his sculptures and smaller objects in the space of historic halls and museum exhibits. He entered into a dialogue with them and uncovered to viewers new ways of looking at his own work and the works from the collection of the City Museum of Wrocław.”

The bilingual publication presents the effect of this surprising “invasion” of the museum. The texts included in it are interwoven with the tale of the objects of Oskar Zięta and Zieta Studio included in the exhibition. Photographs from the show itself are juxtaposed with shots from sessions which Zięta invited Alicja Kielan, Laura Korzeniowska and Kasia Mateńska to carry out. In his introduction, Maciej Łagiewski, director of the City Museum of Wrocław, ponders whether the objects and sculptures by Oskar Zięta withstood the collision with historic artisanship. Magdalena Szmida-Półbratek discusses the history of the Royal Palace. Anna Diduch writes about the exhibition as a spatiotemporal performance in the context of similar experiments with time in art and contemporary culture. Zięta’s mirrored objects serve as the leitmotif for these narratives, reflecting the past and leading into the future.