Kantor's 1967 The Sea Concerto. Courtesy Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor Cricoteka, Cracow. © Eustachy Kossakowski.

An exhibition at London's Barbican Art Gallery, The Impossible Theatre, presents the work of 20th century stage director and artist Tadeusz Kantor and other younger Polish artists.

The show, which runs until April 16 2006, features works which are varied, both in their subject matter and in the form they take. There are installations, photographs, drawings and sculptures, as well as recordings of plays and ‘happenings’. The works, however, are strongly linked by the common theme of performance.

Kantor developed an approach to performance known as the ‘Theatre of Death’, which sought to illustrate the mechanisms of memory. The past is always present: the dead appear with the living on stage and personal stories are entangled with history and myth.

Robert Kusmirowski, emiTime (2005), based on Kantor’s The Dead Class. © Marianne Greber.

Lech Stangret, who was in Kantor’s troupe for 11 years, describes his theatre not as “a reproduction of reality or an illusion,” but as “the creation of a new world on stage”. Kantor was interested in where life and art met and this is a recurrent theme in the exhibition.

The exhibition starts with a 2005 piece by Robert Kusmirowski, who is well known for his sculptures and once created a life-size replica of a train station in Krakow.

For The Impossible Theatre he has created an installation entitled emiTime, inspired by Kantor’s play, The Dead Class, in which a group of ghostly old men and women behave in a raucous and improvised manner in a decrepit classroom.

Kantor's 1967 'happening'. Courtesy Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor Cricoteka, Cracow. © Jozef Piatkowski.

Kusmirowski’s work is about the power of objects to evoke the past. It represents a classroom, suggested by cargo boxes arranged like desks. An old-fashioned desk is placed at the front, on which are placed aged objects one might have found in a school towards the beginning of the 20th century.

We are then shown a recording of Kantor’s The Dead Class, an example of his ‘Theatre of Death’ approach, inspired by an experience he had when the sight of an empty classroom evoked memories of his school days.

“Once again I was a small boy, sitting in a wretched village classroom, on a bench scarred by penknives, licking my ink-stained fingers to turn the pages of a primer,” said Kantor of the experience.

Artur Zmijewski, Eye for an Eye, 1998. Courtesy Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.

As well as the recording of the play, in which Kantor appears on stage as director, actor and author, the exhibition features some of the crayon and felt-tip drawings he created in connection with The Dead Class.

Kantor’s Panoramic Sea Happenings (1976) series includes his Sea Concerto. We are shown a photograph of this happening – a performance outside the stage – in which a conductor ‘directs’ the sounds of nature.

Atur Zmijewski’s explores, in his work, uncomfortable situations which show society’s attitudes to those seen as different. His 1998 series Eye For An Eye features photographs of people ‘lending a limb’ to others who do not have one.

Pawel Althamer's Staff en plein air (2005). Courtesy Zacheta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. © Julia Leopold.

The naked bodies of the able bodied and the disabled are presented in such a way that the two appear joined, forming a hybrid body. The images are compelling: for a moment we do not know which limb belongs to whom.

Powel Althamer’s 2005 piece was created for this exhibition. He organised a trip for a group of attendants working for Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw, where The Impossible Theatre travels in May 2006.

Althamer took them to London, where they replaced their colleagues at the Curve for one day, and gave them a make over. Photographs of the group are shown.

Katarzyna Kozyra's In Art Dreams Come True: a singing lesson. Courtesy of the artist.

“The role of the staff often seems to me to have been underestimated and strongly objectified,” said Althamer.

The exhibition ends with Katarzyna Kozyra’s work. Kozyra’s main interest is in the boundaries and limitations of her body.

The film In Art Dreams Come True shows Kozyra’s transformation, aided by drag queen Gloria Viagra, into a singing diva. A human-sized bird cage, which she sang from towards the opening of the exhibition, is also included in the show.

Tadeusz Kantor, Pillory II (1985). Courtesy Cricoteka, Cracow. © Marianne Greber.

Kozyra dons a new personality and tests her abilities. The experience allows her to satisfy an aspiration, but also exposes her to the possibility of humiliation and failure. While Althamer and Zmijewski create roles for others, Kozyra creates a new role for herself, as a singer.

The Impossible Theatre is an intriguing, stimulating and, at times, amusing show that explores the place where art and life overlap.