Working Group

Poland

Agnieszka Kulazinska   <a.kulazinska@gmail.com>
Łukasz Guzek <lukasz.guzek@doc.art.pl>
Film expert
Marek Zygmunt <marek.zygmunt@studiocale.pl>

Hungary
Kata Balázs-Miklós  <kbalazs@acbgaleria.hu>
Zsolt Miklósvölgyi <zsmiklosvolgyi@acbgaleria.hu>

Czech Republic
Štěpánka Bieleszová <bieleszova@muo.cz>
Ladislav Daněk <danek@muo.cz>
Film expert
Martin Müller (Audiovisual Centre at Palacký University)

Slovakia
Alexandra Tamasova  <alexandra.tamasova@gmail.com>

Working Group members
Łukasz Guzek, dr hab., prof. Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk
Born 1962
Education:
PhD in art history from the Jagiellonian University,

habilitation in art history from the University of Wrocław.
Research interests:
In his work combines research in art history with art criticism and curatorial practice. His research interests cover conceptual art, performance art, installation art, media art and breakthrough modernism / postmodernism in the visual arts, as well as documentation of art, understood as both a problem of the theory of art and as the practice of archiving, retention, maintenance and care of contemporary ephemeral art forms.
The current research project concerns the study of the history of contemporary art in Middle Europe (www.midart.eu).
Editor of the e-book Bridge Over Time. Part 1:  https://www.laznia.pl/ksiegarnia/bridge-over-time-contemporary-picture-of-the-past- pdf-105/

Since 2009-present he is an editor-in-chief of scholarly journal Art and Documentation  (www.journal.doc.art.pl).
Books:

Installation Art. The Question of Relationship Between Space and Presentness in Contemporary Art. Warszawa: Neriton, IH PAN, 2007.
Performatization of Art. Performance Art and Action Factor in Polish Art Criticism. Collected essays. Gdańsk: ASP w Gdańsku, 2013.
Reconstruction of Action Art in Poland. Warszawa, Toruń: Polski Instytut Studiów nad Sztuką Świata, Wydawnictwo Tako, 2017.

Agnieszka Kulazińska  
She graduated from MA Art History Department of University of Lodz (2002).
She is mainly interested in social impact of art and social reception of contemporary art.
Since 2007 she has been working in Centre for Contemporary Art Łaźnia in Gdansk as a curator and since 2013 chief curator. Since 2008, she has been carrying out the project Cities on the Edge, presenting artists from South America and Palestine, among others.
Curator of international projects including: an exhibition and projects in public space in the framework of Liverpool Biennial (Under the bridge, 2009, Unwanted visitors, 2012); exhibition of Polish artists in Berlin and Madrid (YPA on tour, 2011); international projects such as Heroes we Love (topic: the heritage of the social realism art in the post-communist countries); Studiotopia. Art, Science and Anthropocene and Studiotopia 2.0. Art and science enters the Symbiocene (topics: art and science, Anthropocene).
As an art critic, she has been cooperating with Polish art magazines such us: EXIT, ARTLUK, FORMAT, OROŃSKO (OROŃSKO Sculpture Quarterly).

Marek Zygmunt
(film expert)
Born 1975
He studied architecture at the Gdańsk University of Technology, graduating in 2002. Since 1995 he creates performances, video performances, multimedia projects and installations, multimedia scenography, videos, experimental music, and photography.

Kata Balázs-Miklós

She is a Budapest-based art historian, graduated in Art History and Hungarian Literature and Linguistics at ELTE Budapest and PhD candidate from the same university. She has been working at acb ResearchLab since 2020.
In her work, she is specialised on the art of the 1980s, photography, performance art, and textile/fibre art. Apart from periods spent at Ludwig Museum, working as a junior researcher grantee at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences or taking part in the SSE Heritage Project in the UK, she taught at various schools and universities like the University of Film and Theatre, the Visart Art Academy (Ecole d&#39;Art Maryse Eloy) the University in Eger.

Štěpánka Bieleszová
Curator of Photography, Museum of Art Olomouc
Born: 1971
Education
MA in Art History, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc (1990–1995).         

Professional Position Curator of the Photography Collection (20th and 21st Century), Museum of Art Olomouc.
1995–2018: Head Curator for 20th Century Art, Museum of Art Olomouc. Since 2019: Lecturer, Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University in Opava.
Research Interests
Her work combines art historical research with curatorial and editorial practice, with a long-term focus on Czech and Central European photography and visual art of the second half of the 20th century and the present. Her research interests include documentary and staged photography, post-war and post-socialist visual culture, photographic archives and collections, authorship and institutional narratives, and the transformation of photographic practices after 1989. A significant part of her work is devoted to collection-based research, field research with living artists, and the interpretation of photography within broader cultural and social contexts.
Selected Curatorial and Research Projects
Since 1995, she has curated more than one hundred exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad, including projects presented in Sofia, Landskrona, Opole, Białystok, Vienna, Budapest, and Pécs.

Between 2021 and 2022, she led a field research project focused on photographers responding to the social transformations of the late 1980s and the post-socialist 1990s. The project combined archival research, studio visits, acquisitions for the museum collection, exhibitions, and monographic publications devoted to Petr Zatloukal, Blanka Lamrová, Michal Kalhous, and Vladislav Galgonek.
Selected Publications Civilizované iluze. Fotografická sbírka Muzea umění Olomouc. Olomouc: Muzeum umění Olomouc, 2012.

Co-author with Björn Anderson, and Vladimír Birgus, Landskrona Foto View: CzechRepublic. A Century of Avant-garde and Off-Guard Photography. Landskrona: City of Landskrona; Olomouc: Muzeum umění Olomouc, 2015.
Co-author of monographs of photographers Vladimír Birgus, Michal Kalhous, Karel Kašpařík, Blanka Lamrová, Miloslav Stibor, Jindřich Štreit, Milena Valušková, Petr Zatloukal, and Vladislav Galgonek.

Ladislav Daněk
Education
MA in Theory and History of Visual Arts, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc (1999–2009).
Professional Position Since 1990 curator at the Museum of Art Olomouc – Museum of Modern Art, where he is responsible for the collection of paintings of the 20th and 21st centuries. Within the photography collection, he initiated the systematic acquisition of documentation
of action and performance art, and artists 's books.
Research Interests
His research focuses on Czech art of the second half of the 20th century and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on Moravian and Central European contexts, post-war and post-socialist transformation, and so-called regional art.

Curatorial and Research Practice
He has participated in the realization of more than 110 monographic and collective exhibitions and is the author or co-author of over 100 exhibition catalogues and scholarly publications. He has contributed to major international and national exhibition projects, including Abstraction.PL. Abstract Art in Polish Painting 1945–2017 (2018), By Charcoal, Paintbrush, Scalpel... Collection of Drawings of the Museum of Art Olomouc (2016), From the Center Out. Regional Art 1985–2010
(2014–2015), From Titian to Warhol. Museum of Art Olomouc 1951–2011 (2012–2013), and Greenhouse. Chapters from the History of Olomouc Visual Culture 1969–1989 (2009).
He is a co-author of the permanent exhibition A Century of Relativity. Visual Ar1900–2000 at the Museum of Art Olomouc, section devoted to the period 1947–2000.
Current Projects
Author and principal investigator of the long-term research project Kvarky a škvarky. The Olomouc Art Scene and Related Zones 1990–2020 (2022–2025).
Co-investigator of the project Olomouc in 3D – A New Dimension of the City s
Cultural Heritage: Past, Present, Future (2023–2028).
Editorial and Public Activities
He regularly publishes art-historical and critical texts, including long-term contributions to the quarterly Prostor Zlín, where he curates the section focused on presenting overlooked artists.

Alexandra Tamásová
Born 1985 Art historian, critic, and curator.
Graduated in History and Theory of Art from the Faculty of Arts, University of Trnava (2009) where she also completed doctoral studies (dissertation Existential Boundaries of the Body, 2012).
Since 2012 to 2025 worked in Slovak National Gallery (SNG) as a curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Collections, Modern and Contemporary Graphic Art, and Naïve Art.
Current position
Researcher at the Reasearch Department, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava
Research Topic
Forms of performative artistic practice and performative visual media in relation to queer culture, with a focus on the formations and transformations of the issue within the V4 region from the late 20th century to the present.

Poster / cover photo – project logo

Gyula Várnai, Rainbow, 2019 badges on wood, 127 × 250 cm

Gyula Várnai, born 1956, lives and works in Dunaújváros, Hungary. In the early 1990s, he was closely associated with the neo-conceptual movement, then widespread in Hungary, and created light and sound installations, often ephemeral and site-specific. Since the early 2000s, he has created lightboxes, graphics, and collages/assemblages using ready-made objects. The subject matter of his work is often embedded in a socio-political context and is full of subtle, intelligently presented interpretations of the surrounding reality.
The work Rainbow is a perfect example of this: it combines conceptual art form with critical, contextual commentary. Gyula Várnai represented Hungary at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 with his project Peace on Earth!
More at:
https://acbgaleria.hu/en/artist/varnai_gyula