When the curators of the exhibitions decided to name it Counter Logic because of the selected works’ references to puzzles, they could not have predicted the conundrum they face in the last days before the exhibition is due to open its doors to the public at Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

The real wild card has been the choice to commission two artists to make new work for the gallery – allowing them to present ‘interventions’ in the exhibition space. So far one of these artists, Glasgow-based Anthony Schrag, is in attendance and working with massive lengths of white lycra attached right across the gallery. What’s not clear so far is how the other artist’s work – Maciej Kurak - will be displayed and viewed by the audience as they wade over the lycra ocean which once was a normal gallery floor. Here the mystery deepens as Maciej has been very mischievous in his correspondence with the exhibition organisers and has been demanding information, not about the gallery, but about the rest of the building to the nearest millimetre. This illusive artist has also not been clear about when he will arrive leaving the gallery staff even more perplexed about what might occur over the next few days.

The key to the exhibition is the idea of jigsaw puzzle. The logic of puzzles apply both to the works and the show itself. "Counter Logic" presents artistic practice as a process of assembling, reassembling, matching elements, editing and composing new forms.

The exhibition has been curated by Jenny Brownrigg, who has worked at Duncan of Jordanstone for seven years but is just about to take up a post as Exhibitions Director at Glasgow School of Art, and Stach Szablowski, who works at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. The curators plan to include a total of six Polish artists as well as Anthony Schrag’s work. The exhibition is part of POLSKA! YEAR, focusing on Polish cultural activity in the UK.

Jenny Brownrigg said: “Pulling this show together has been a conundrum in itself but we are sure that the audience will enjoy the unusual experience that visiting this exhibition will bring”. Co-curator Stach Szablowski said: “This exhibition is meant to be a kind of jigsaw puzzle. In all the classic puzzles all elements must sooner or later find their place and ultimately fall into a harmonious picture. But I hope that this will not happen with Counter Logic. There will be no happy ending to this exhibition, in which each work finds its place and freezes in the cold ice of curatorial conceptual logic. On the contrary, I see more potential in mismatch, in the awareness that neither art nor life, nor the exhibition can be arranged in a logical whole. The game is never finished - and that’s what makes the game interesting.”

Counter Logic will be open to the public from the 3rd until the 31st October.

Cooper Gallery, Dundee.

Preview : Friday 2 October 2009, 6-8pm
3 – 31 Oct

Artists: Olaf Brzeski, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Tomasz Kozak, Maciej Kurak, Anna Molska, Janek Simon, Anthony Schrag

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