Curator Talk: Pavel Pyś
Fri Dec 13, 2024 | 4 PM
To coincide with the opening of the exhibition Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s, Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy at the Walker Art Center, will offer a broad overview of the exhibition, with a particular focus on the relationship between the works on view and the political climate at the time of their creation.
Featuring over 100 artists, Multiple Realities is the largest survey of Central Eastern European art presented in North America to date. Drawing from years of research and dialogue with artists, art historians and curators, Pyś will discuss the rich, multifaceted artistic landscape of the Eastern Bloc during a period of political, social and cultural upheaval.
This talk is free and open to the public and will take place in Courtroom 302 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Doors open at 3:30 PM. Please use the Gallery’s Hornby Street entrance. Capacity for this event is limited. Registration is required. Seating is first come, first served.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Pavel Pyś is the Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy at the Walker Art Center. At the Walker, he has curated solo exhibitions by Daniel Buren, Paul Chan, Pan Daijing, Michaela Eichwald, Christine Sun Kim, Carolyn Lazard, Ralph Lemon & Kevin Beasley, Sarah Michelson and Elizabeth Price, as well as the group exhibition The Body Electric (2019). In 2018, he was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship, which aided research towards Multiple Realities: Experimental Art from the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-80s, presented at the Walker, Phoenix Art Museum and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Pyś is closely involved in leading the strategic vision, development and long-range planning of the Walker’s collection. In 2022, he co-curated Kingdom of the Ill at Museion Bolzano with Sara Cluggish. Between 2011 and 2015, Pyś was the Exhibitions & Displays Curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. In 2011, he was the recipient of the Zabludowicz Collection Curatorial Open and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo curatorial residency. He has published essays on artists including Trisha Baga, Carol Bove, Michael Dean, John Latham, Wilhelm Sasnal, Alina Szapocznikow, Fredrik Værslev and Hague Yang. Pyś received an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College in 2010 and an MSc in Culture & Society from the London School of Economics in 2009.