West Liberty University’s Nutting Gallery is proud to present the work of various artists in their current exhibition, “Generation 2.0 What’s Left After the Polish School of Poster.” While the collection and its curator arrived a little late to campus due to complications surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Ukrainian border being closed from refugees fleeing the war, Dr. Maciej Zdanowicz, recently arrived in the U.S. and offered WLU students and faculty a series of lectures and workshops throughout the week. All lectures hosted were free of charge before the exhibition formally closed on April 13 in preparation for the upcoming senior exhibition.

Professor Brian Fencl, the director of the Nutting Gallery here on campus, explained that this specific exhibition is not just unique due to the nature and magnitude of what is currently being displayed, but it’s also special to WLU and its partnership with the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Poland. The two institutions have a new international agreement in place that was founded in December of 2020. The agreement is further explained in a press release found here, where students, faculty and ideas can be exchanged; “This show is a product of that agreement… [and] should be of benefit to all design students.”

While the exhibition felt relatively short-lived, Fencl shared that he, along with the rest of the creative arts faculty here on campus, was thankful that the works were able to be shown at all, as the show was quite complicated to put together. “Between the original outbreak of COVID-19, language barriers, the cost of shipping originals out of Europe and through customs and then our guests getting sick – this has been a challenge. It is a visually interesting show and the tradition of Polish posters is so rich that it is great that we get to share what is happening in current poster design with our campus community.”

Including the work of the most “esteemed and original Polish poster artists of the 21st century,” as detailed in an informational document shared by Fencl, the showcase includes the work of “more than 50 artists representing the most important national artistic and academic centers, including: Gdańsk, Kielce, Kraków, Łódź, Olsztyn, Poznań, Szczecin, Toruń, Warsaw, Wrocław,” and allows our campus the opportunity of confronting the various “philosophies and practices” that are so commonplace in the contemporary nature of the art being displayed. The collection’s presentation in the Nutting Gallery is the “third edition of this project” since its global premiere in May 2021, and has received a great deal of attention, commentary and discussion.

Participants of the exhibition include: Mariusz Andryszczyk, Jakub Balicki, Edgar Bąk, Jarosław Bujny, Łukasz Chmielewski, Monika Cybulska, Justyna Czerniakowska, Wojciech Domagalski, Fontarte (Artur Frankowski, Magdalena Frankowska), Karolina Grudzińska, Małgorzata Gurowska, Przemysław Hajek, Patryk Hardziej, Krzysztof Iwański, Michał Kacperczyk, Ryszard Kajzer, Zofia Klajs, Adam Klasa, Bartek Kociemba Arobal, Aneta Kosin, Sławomir Kosmynka, Karolina Kotowska, Alicja Kultys, Ireneusz Kuriata, Agnieszka Łońska, Michał Matoszko, Julia Mirny, Aleksandra Niepsuj, Piotr Olejarz, Marek Osman, Nikodem Pręgowski, Łukasz Rayski, Galeria Rusz (Joanna Górska, Rafał Góralski), Homework (Jerzy Skakun, Joanna Górska), Wilhelm Sasnal, Artur Skowroński, Vadym Solowski, Jakub Sobczak, Jakub Stępień HAKOBO, Mateusz Stradomski, Szymon Szymankiewicz, Syfon Studio (Ula Janowska, Filip Tofil), Jerzy Tchórzewski, Joanna Tyborowska, Marcin Urbańczyk, Aleksander Walijewski, Katarzyna Witczak, Marcin Władyka, and Agnieszka Ziemiszewska, and have been curated by Wojciech Domagalski and Dr. Maciej Zdanowicz.