Collection

The work titled “A Conversation with Oscar Hansen” is a specific tribute to the outstanding Polish architect, the inventor of the Open Form theory. Reis somewhat perversely froze a fragment of Hansen’s housing district in the form of a static sculpture (pejoratively termed by Hansen “the closed form”). Thus the sculpture has become a somewhat dubious monument of a certain noble utopian idea and its lack of feasibility. Originally, the minimalist work stood in public space in Lublin (created for the Otwarte Miasto [Open City] public space art festival in 2013) and, more specifically, in the proximity of the Church of the Dominican Order. By juxtaposing Hansen’s idea with the church – an exemplary institution of the Closed Form – Reis has revealed the permanent conflict in Polish culture between modern ideas aiming at opening and activating the society, and national and religious ideas originating from the notion of centralisation of subservience.