Ways of Seeing. Collection of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź

The publication also tells the story of the collection and the history of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, one of the most essential avant-garde and experimental art centers in Europe since the 1930s.

The exhibition is organized into three thematic chapters, each highlighting different aspects of avant-garde and coexisting art, guiding visitors through a structured exploration of the collection.

The chapter titles are drawn from works influenced by the collection. Each chapter revolves around different elements, treating art as a starting point for reflection on perception, experiencing the world, and organizing experiences. They explore the relationship between reach and cognitive processes—memory, space, and duty—and the social perspectives influenced by culture, tradition, and economics. This reflects the earlier emergence of questions: what is visible, and what does it mean to be invisible?

Artists share their perspectives with us, encompassing a multitude of ways to create and obtain images. They possess a relational nature of gaze and interaction with it—who directs, at whom, and from whom. They demonstrate that our perception of reality depends on many factors, including knowledge, positionality, and available technologies. Approaches to linguistic solutions range from realism to abstraction, while simultaneously maintaining a fluidity between them.

The publication of the exhibition structure, using a key tool for each chapter, is complemented by three essays. The first provides insight into the scholarly publication process from the curatorial team's perspective. It reconstructs the methods and solutions employed at the time of its collapse, embedding them in the history and specificity of the Muzeum Sztuki. Texts by Mieke Bal and Łukasz Zaremba address the application of exhibition reading systems, which are expanded upon by additional contexts encompassing the museum's collection and the role of visual culture.

The exhibition "Methods of Presentation" presents the work of artists united by curiosity about the possibilities of new technologies and a risky perspective on their specter. They utilize various artistic tools—from initial avant-garde files to test the medium's possibilities, through video art of the 1960s and 1970s, which analyzes, among other things, the mechanisms of manipulation employed by mass media, to feminist art developed through portable cameras dominated by male filmmakers. One of the collection's latest works, Jury Shust's video "Pine Cone Seeds," utilizes cell phone footage taken by migrants trapped on the Polish-Belarusian border, documenting the humanitarian crisis there since 2021. The development of a tool that introduces the cinematic recording of reality not only allows for new perspectives, mediated by advanced viewing and sharing systems, but also expands the repertoire of visual cultures, offering perspectives accessible to the marginalized.

The museum's collection exhibition explores ways of seeing while simultaneously examining how art reflects perceptions of reality. This is a project of conscious limitation, and in some ways, even one that is inherently impossible. The institution's practice, grounded in choice, selection, and preservation, is inherent in a dual logic of shaping the field of vision and its boundaries. The museum is a display device — meaning for use on view — but also for use with artistic devices; it can be used where decisions are made about what remains invisible. The mission of presenting predictions must be considered incomplete, as each representation is regarded as an omission. The most literal concept refers to objects from the vast collection that are not shown this time. In an accusation of consequences, identities, and perspectives that are not represented in the collections due to geographical, historical, and administrative decisions affecting each collection.