Ryszard Winiarski | Games. Spectra Art Space Masters

Spectra Art Space presents as a part of the Masters cycle the exhibition of Ryszard Winiarski, which has been structured around his visionary concept so-called “Game Parlours” (“Salony Gier”). In the context of the artist’s earlier persistent explorations in the area of system and chance art, “Games” appeared in 1972 for the first time, as a manifestation of the necessary synthesis of rules. Winiarski indicated that the idea emerged from the need to overcome misunderstandings and demonstrate the process of creating his paintings. 

In the “Game Parlour”, the viewer no longer had to rely on the structure of the paintings to guess the rules from which they resulted. Winiarski proposed his public to actively participate in the process. He enabled them to build visual objects similar to those of the artist’s. The painting fields which earlier had been artistically arranged were replaced by plain boards, places for games. 

The exhibition as part of the Ryszard Winiarski | Spectra Art Space Masters cycle invokes a historical event from Kunstcentrum Badhuis in Gorinchem (1976), which fully presented the artistic novelty. The exhibition showed seven games designed by the artist, which were constructed based on the classical canon of board games, both strategic ones and games of chance. After forty years of the presentation in the Netherlands, the comlete set of historical boards became part of Anna and Jerzy Starak’s collection, forming the core of the exhibition in Spectra Art Space. The major role at both the Warsaw exhibition of 2016 and the Gorinchem exhibition of 1976 is to be played by viewers, who – apart from participating in the process of constructing art objects, can derive pleasure from playing games.
(from Spectra Art Space website)