Primary Forms

“Primary Forms” is an annual programme of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw designed for pupils from the fourth through the eighth grade of primary school, carried out in cooperation with the Roman Czernecki Educational Foundation. Works by contemporary artists are placed in a box resembling an architectural model of a school. In 2021 ten boxes were delivered to 10 schools in bigger and smaller towns in Poland. The boxes in the first edition contain exercises, tools and instructions created by Paweł Althamer, Kasper Bosmans, Gabo Camnitzer, Sharon Lockhart, Goshka Macuga, Mikołaj Moskal, Ramona Nagabczyńska, Agnieszka Polska, Katarzyna Przezwańska, Slavs and Tatars, and Olga Micińska. The works executed at the schools may become teaching aids, decoration, an event, or part of the school’s infrastructure. The decision on the installation site, the method of execution, and the function is taken by the users of the exhibition and in relation to the school’s architecture.”Primary Forms” is an exhibition that arises within school spaces, in classrooms and corridors, gyms and playgrounds. It can be executed numerous times and interpreted in various ways (in the selection of fragments, scale, colours etc). “Primary Forms” alludes to the programme School Prints, which was founded in the UK after the Second World War. An identical set of lithographs created by a group of well-known artists were presented to primary schools and exhibited in classrooms. The project also alludes to numerous experiments in art and education undertaken in the 20th and 21st centuries, such as “Pure Consciousness”, a series of exhibitions at preschools of works by Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara, launched in 1998. His paintings could be used as instructional tools helping pupils learn numbers and the days of the week. “Primary Forms” is inspired by exercises and methodologies of such artists as Joseph Beuys, Cornelius Cardew, Jef Geys, Anna Halprin, Oskar Hansen, Luis Camnitzer, K.G. Subramanyan, and many others who worked at schools or founded their own educational institutions. The format for the exercises, tasks and tools included in the box allude to Marcel Duchamp and his travelling exhibition-in-a-suitcase, as well as “Fluxkits’’—boxes prepared by artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement, containing music scores, audio recordings, games and puzzles, intended for activation, play, reading or use.