We are pleased to take part in the exhibition about Warsaw in Tallinn.

In Warsaw, modernist buildings are a major source of inspiration for local designers and visual artists. Along with typography or neons, they are the material the city and its identity are made of. To explore this urban grammar, Kolektiv, a curators' group based at Le Corbusier's Housing Unit in Marseille, selected artworks by Edgar Bąk, Magdalena Łapińska, Mikołaj Długosz, Marta and Henryk Kwiatek, Izabela Sroka and Julia Cybis.

LIVING THE MODERNIST CITY - WWA *

About the Silesia Typography project:

 “Before visiting Lower Silesia, my impressions of the region were mainly revolving around the classical images, including coal mining, slag heaps, smog. However, after the first visit, due to the invaluable help of Michał Kubieniec and Dominik Tokarski, a totally different face of Silesia unveiled in front of my eyes. Referring not only to mining industry or post mining realities, but most of all encompassing the artefacts of the area that had been erected simultaneously to the main players of daily grind of the region. On the coal-bound landscape had arisen concrete gems in which I later discovered hidden letters. And that was the beginning of the idea of the cycle Silesia Typography that combine my fascination for characters and architecture”.– Henryk Kwiatek.

Kwiaciarnia Grafiki is one of the few polish studios working on serigraphy. His two pillars are the illustrator Marta Kwiatek and the activist, graphic artist and cyclist Henryk Kwiatek. Both fascinated by modernist aesthetics, they recently engaged in saving Warsaw velodrome Orzeł Nowe Dynasy. Henryk Kwiatek (sometimes undersigning Valery Virag) associated with screenprinting workshop Graphics Flower Shop in Warsaw, Poland, for which he prepared a series of " Silesia Typography", which consists of topographic displays of Silesian modernist architecture. He uses the Futura typeface for the building material. Each building was created only from letters. The cycle was launched with an iconic path through modernist architecture of Katowice: Superjednostka (SuperUnit), Gwiazdy (Stars), Kukurydze (Corn-cobs), CINiBA (the building of the Scientific Information Centre and Academic Library). Each of them is enclosed in some kind of letter related setup. It ranges from one to many characters. As if Silesia with its mining background had been raised on typographical foundations. The next series was dedicated to buildings that no longer exist as well as temporary structure such as the floating coffee bar "Arizona", that can be nowadays seen in Pogoria or another temporary monument, the flower tower.