The exhibition of Sophie Thun at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź will be the first institutional presentation of her oeuvre in Poland on this scale. The artist approaches topics such as representation, archives, care and maintenance work in regard to the photographic medium. Thun will present her recent body of work, consisting of large-format prints, which she will juxtapose with works from the collection of the Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź.

Sophie Thun’s photographs are records and traces of her presence in exhibition spaces and darkrooms – they reflect her surroundings and become a vivid metaphor one can call a secret performance. The photographs were taken in the institutions after hours when these were empty and available only to the artist. Besides depicting her activities within the exhibition spaces, they also serve as multilayered visual reports from her solitary labor in the darkroom.

Later on, Thun exposes, cuts, rearranges, and exposes them again. Her montages become an attempt to deconstruct the photographic medium by revealing its mechanisms. This process shifts into the rite, leading to an aspect crucial as much as an experimental dimension of her work, which is the care work towards photography – Sophie Thun incorporates small pieces of the archives into her never-ending reiterations. With the show, she initiates the process of rediscovering artworks from the collection hidden deep in storage spaces.

Apart from capturing the captivating dialogue of Thun’s work with the legacy of avant-garde and conceptual photography, the exhibition will aim to raise the question concerning the medium itself in a broader and contextual way, including artworks in different techniques that address the primary elements of photography, such as light, time, and space.

/ Curators: Daniel Muzyczuk and Franciszek Smoręda