Tied Too Neatly: Tadeusz Kantor @ Summerhall

Polish avant-garde theatre director Tadeusz Kantor makes a dual reappearance in the capital this month with two independent exhibitions that mark the centenary of his birth. The Royal Scottish Academy showcases recently unearthed footage of The Water Hen performed at the Edinburgh festival in 1972, while Summerhall serendipitously presents a second ‘long lost’ film Attention!... Painting, accompanied by an extensive body of mixed-technique wall-based works. Widely acknowledged as a pioneer of 20th century experimental theatre, this exhibition provides an alternative narrative that focuses upon works produced within a ten-year stretch early on in his artistic career; a visceral exploration of materials that is both tactile and disarmingly intimate.

Trapped behind glass, stapled to mount board or pinioned by frames, Kantor’s Inbetween structures are not going anywhere. Drawings, collages, paintings, photographs and written manifestoes cluster against walls, leaving the central floor space curiously empty, as though in anticipation of a performance. The muffled archival feel that results is disquieting. Out of sync with the show’s title, everything assumes its proper place; fixed and ordered: a counterpoint to contemporary trends in exhibition making in which the work so often breaks free of gallery walls and resists framing. This exhibition instead demands an up close and personal engagement with its works, as further spaces unfold within the picture plane.

A collection of black and white photographs documenting Kantor’s Popular Exhibition of 1963, Kraków, present a space that couldn’t be more different to the one the viewer is currently standing in. Figurative drawings are strung between the bare brickwork walls, strong theatrical lighting throws some parts of the room into shadow while objects; props and costumes that hint at the presence of the performers body are cast to the fore. On the opposite wall a manifesto comprised of collaged images and text on canvas declares Kantor’s intention to overcome certain conventions of the art-system he was familiar with. He calls for a new approach to exhibition making as a means of ‘directly involving the audience in adventures and traps, refusing them and not satisfying.’ This change in status of the audience and change in meaning of the exhibition are understood by Kantor as being mutually contingent. Contemporary audiences visiting the show may well note that he also describes pictures themselves as being ‘frozen formal systems’ that are no longer relevant; which seems somewhat discordant with the way the work is currently being displayed.

Kantor’s cinematic action painting Attention!… Painting is the lynchpin of the exhibition, recording the flux and flow of materials through the medium of celluloid film. There is a palpable sense that he is situating himself within an expanded field of practice as luscious layers of paint fold, break apart, squirt, splot and splatter. Colours press and run, conveying notions of flexible materiality with a very contemporary feel. Though the film is never focussed on the artist, his physical presence is closely felt off-screen providing energetic momentum, as the accompanying early electronic soundscape crescendos or falls away accordingly.

Many of the works on display share this multi-layered approach to construction. Kantor is credited as inventing emballage as a medium in its own right, as evidenced by objects that are folded within or wrapped up inside other objects; a small figurative drawing is flattened within a translucent plastic bag which is mounted and framed.

As highly original and hugely influential as Kantor’s legacy today may be, eulogising an artist who is no longer present to speak for himself may serve many purposes depending on who’s vying to take ownership of his inheritance. One leaves the exhibition with the feeling that his artistic oeuvre has itself been wrapped up and pre-packaged.