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Cover of the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Cover of the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Spread from the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Spread from the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Spread from the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Spread from the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Spread from the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Spread from the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
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Spread from the catalogue Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s, 2023. Photo by Kam Herndon. Courtesy Walker Art Center.
Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s–1980s
2023
Edited by Pavel Pys. Foreword by Mary Ceruti. Contributions by Ivana Bago, Dušan Barok, Anna Daucíková, Michal Grzegorzek, Libuše Jarcovjáková, Daniel Muzyczuk, Alexandra Pirici, Pavel Pys, Karol Radziszewski, Kathleen Reinhardt, Natalia Sielewicz.
Design Director: Mark Owens
Designers: Mark Owens, Ziga Testen, and Kim Mumm Hansen
Editor: Pamela Johnson
Publications Manager: Jake Yuzna
Indexer: Enid L Zafran
Image Specialist: Sebastiaan Hanekroot,Colour & Books
Proofreader: Diane Woo
Printed by die Keure, Belgium
Typefaces: Balance, Magda Clean Mono, and Animo
Paper: Munken Print White 115gsm, Mono Gloss 115gsm, and Profibulk 135 gsm
Multiple Realities offers a sweeping survey of experimental art made in six Central Eastern European nations—GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia—during the 1960s to 1980s. Despite their geographical proximity, artists working during this time encountered different conditions for daily life and art-making, confronting varying degrees of control and pressure exerted by state authorities.
Embracing conceptual or formal innovation and a spirit of adventurousness, Multiple Realities sheds light on ways that artists refused, circumvented, eluded and subverted official systems, in the process creating works often riddled with wit, humor or irony. While it presents select canonical figures from the region, the exhibition foregrounds lesser-known practitioners, particularly women artists, artist collectives and those exploring embodiment through an LGBTQ+ lens.