Marcin Dudek: The Group | Exhibition at Kunsthal Extra City | Antwerp, Belgium

The Group is the first institutional solo exhibition in the Benelux by Marcin Dudek (PL, 1979). Dudek brings together visual works and installations around the central themes of crowd psychology and the spectacle.  Informed by his violent youth, spent among hooligans, Dudek's work has been imbued with questions about safety and violence, group dynamics, family, but above all about our urge to belong.

Dudek grew up in the suburbs of Kraków in Poland as a child of the in-between generation. Hooliganism proved the ideal escape for youngsters caught between the late days of communism and the rise of hyper-capitalism. The street was Dudek's living room and he soon became absorbed by the paramilitary group around football club KS Cracovia. There he found a group identity that transcended the dreariness of the apartment blocks of his area.

Dudek took leave of that close-knit brotherhood at the age of twenty-one and threw himself into art with an enormous dedication. His work reads like a continuous autobiographical dialogue with that past and focuses on the rituals of his former subculture. Using many found and reused materials, he creates installations that exude a clear DIY attitude. The physical labour is part of his artistic process and often departs from an obsessive work ethic. Recurring motifs are hoodies and bomber jackets - clothing that may instil fear in outsiders but, paradoxically, a sense of safety and belonging in the wearer. Dudek's recurring use of metal and fences also shares these conflicting emotions.

The Group brings together seven complex works in the neo-Gothic, former Dominican church.  The orange scorch marks that can be seen here and there are remnants of an intervention Dudek carried out on the opening night with a flare.  Partly accentuated by the church's religious architecture, a multitude of themes emerge: the human yearning for security, the structural similarities between religion and football, the de- and constructive nature of group dynamics and the constant human desire for spectacle.