Pavel Pyś

From the 1950s through the end of the 1980s, the film and TV schools in Prague and Poland attracted hundreds of students from countries including Syria, Algeria, Iran, India, Colombia, and Cuba. Looking back at this history, a group of scholars reconsider the successes and failures of this attempt by authorities to promote global socialist solidarity.

Exhibition curator Pavel S. Pyś explores experimental art made in six Central Eastern European nations during the 1960s to 1980s and their relationships between art and politics as well as the roles that institutions play in society.

On occasion of Michaela Eichwald’s solo exhibition at the Walker, exhibition curator Pavel Pyś reflects on the artist’s use of imitation leather as a support for her paintings. Delving into a short history of PVC and pleather in the popular imaginary, Pyś asks how the material’s character, status, and associated histories and meanings resonate in Eichwald’s practice.

“I am an artist, but I don’t identify as an activist. I am simply using my artist platform to boost information and redistribute funds.” Minneapolis-based singer Dua Saleh recently released “body cast,” a single that condemns police brutality and injustice. Saleh notes that the murder of George Floyd prompted them to donate all sales of the single to Women for Political Change.

How can a work of dance be collected by a museum? How, why, and to what ends can a museum collection support interdisciplinary artworks that stem from performances? What opportunities and limitations do such works present to the artist and institution? Pavel Pyś considers acquisitions of works by Maria Hassabi, Jason Moran, Joan Jonas, Meredith Monk, and Carolee Schneemann that have each presented unique questions, challenging and opening new ways for the Walker to approach collecting.

“Collaboration, solidarity, and supporting one another are important values, especially today in these times of uncertainty.”  Visual Arts Curator Pavel Pyś introduces “Side by Side: Collaborative Artistic Practices in the United States, 1960s–1980s,” the newest volume in the Walker’s ongoing Living Collections Catalogue, which examines artists whose works were “highly collaborative, interdisciplinary, and often aligned with concurrent social movements.”

The Walker’s world-renowned collections feature diverse artists whose works continually question the possibilities of art. Over the course of the last 15 months, the newest additions—by artists from Carolee Schneemann, Stan VanDerBeek, and Christian Marclay to Trisha Baga, Tetsuya Yamada, and Martine Syms—were guided by a strong focus on two key areas: interdisciplinary practices and collecting works by emerging artists.

As Elizabeth Price’s solo exhibition comes to a close, exhibition curator Pavel Pyś reflects on the artist’s recently completed trilogy, SLOW DANS, of which two parts—FELT TIP and KOHL—are on view at the Walker. Drawing on references to clothing design, coal mining, and new technologies, Price’s trilogy examines the possibilities of life under advanced capitalism, especially in relation to issues of social class and gender.

With this directive, Elizabeth Price engaged the British studio Spencer Fenton to create two custom typefaces for her SLOW DANS trilogy: “I want it to be modular, created using variations and arrangements of a single unit, shaped like a stitch or a seed, with hints of jacquard looms, pianola scrolls, and Tetris games.” Here Matthew Fenton discusses collaborating with Price to create works on view in her Walker solo show.

“Instead of trying to make art about sick people, I’m trying to make art that is sick in all of its material and formal qualities.” Carolyn Lazard discusses her work In Sickness and Study, now on view in the Walker exhibition The Body Electric at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

“What defines our relationship to the space of the screen? How do we negotiate ourselves and others via technology? How do artists respond to a shifting technological landscape in relation to identity and embodiment?” As The Body Electric opens at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, curator Pavel Pyś shares the thinking behind the Walker-organized exhibition.

“Ties are not simply phallic; they echo the pen-nib itself, signifying the way executive labor expresses its power: through writing.” Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price discusses #MeToo, the sexualized symbolism of men’s neckties, and her new Walker-commissioned works, KOHL and FELT TIP.

In September 1965, Daniel Buren left the Marché Saint-Pierre, a textile market in Paris, with ten meters of linen preprinted with stripes—white alternating with colors—launching a new chapter in his then-young career. Since then, he has utilized stripes in his work—on paintings, wheat-pasted posters, protest signs, banners, and sailboat sails. In conversation with curator Pavel Pyś, he discusses his practice, from these earliest experiments to a signature project that made its US debut at the Walker this summer: Voile/Toile–Toile/Voile (Sail/Canvas–Canvas/Sail), a group of nine striped sails, installed in the Cowles Pavilion in the order their accompanying sailboats finished in a June 23 regatta in nearby Bde Mka Ska.

For an artwork to bear witness to turbulent times and uneasy politics, does it need to be overtly explicit? Can questions of identity be engaged through abstraction, minimalism, and conceptualism? How can art of the past help us come to terms with an uncertain present? In a virtual tour, the curators of I am you, you are too address these questions through works by Yto Barrada, Alfredo Jaar, Yoko Ono, Postcommodity, Danh Vo, and others.

As we near the completion of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden renovation, we are saddened to hear of the passing of the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, whose Sagacious Head 6 (1989–1990) and Sagacious Head 7 (1989–1990) will once again be on view to our audiences in June.

Visual Arts curator Pavel Pyś talks with Los Angeles–based artist Liz Larner about X (2013), the gleaming stainless steel sculpture that welcomes visitors to the new Walker entrance.