Photo courtesy Raster, Warsaw

Aneta Grzeszykowska, "Untitled Film Stills #15" (2006). Presented by the Raster gallery

© 2007 by MCH Swiss Exhibition (Holding) Ltd

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But I have no complaint with these two artists winning special attention. In the art world's current happy plurality, anyone's taste is as useful as anyone else's.

For my part, I was really taken by Aneta Grzeszykowska's work, which was presented by Warsaw's Raster gallery. It's called Untitled Film Stills and, yes, it's a faithful attempt to remake the famous Cindy Sherman cycle, except that it's in color.

Grzeszykowska (who even looks a bit like Sherman) features herself as model in all the pictures, shot in Warsaw last year. It's a wonderful homage to Sherman, and a lovely intelligent twist on all those identity issues in the original. The realization of the lengths she had to go to make these facsimiles, including having to hand-make the outdated clothing and objects, gives them a presence far beyond that of a simple imitation. Representatives from Sherman's gallery, Metro Pictures, showed enough interest to actually buy some.

Very different, but equally exciting, I think, is Akram Zaatari's work shown by Galerie Sfeir-Semler. There is no lack of accessibility here, as a text panel that introduces the two pieces, Saida, June 6, 1982 and Earth of Endless Secrets, is actually included in the installation. Still, this is delightfully complex stuff, involving a letter buried inside a shell case in 1991 by a former member of the secular Lebanese resistance. The fighter's journal was discovered by the artist, who then encouraged the family living in the house where the shell case was buried to dig it up and find the letter that was intended for them. With his pile of help-yourself printed images of the shell case, Zaatari also creates an homage to an older artist, this time Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Zaatari, like Grzeszykowska, is an artist to watch.

I think the same might be said of Ricardo Valentim, who showed with Galeria Pedro Cera. His Film Festival is a treat. It's a series of 70 screenings of vintage British and American public education films, made between the 1930s and '80s in their original 16mm format, redolent of both well-meaning didacticism and now often-horrifying political assumptions. While I watched this morning, I learned, in a movie called Not with an Empty Quiver, how Native Americans were encouraged to "better themselves" in the 1970s by designing and manufacturing gravestones. And as a loyal Englishman, I'm hoping to get back tomorrow afternoon for the coronation of George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Excellent, witty, seriously engaged work, I'd say.

I also enjoyed the pieces that Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom have made for Galleria Fonti—they’re like shiny, black Sol LeWitt’s, but with sound. And I was intrigued by Naama Tsabar's encore, presented by Dvir Gallery and made by encasing a rock band's entire stage gear, appropriately enough, in what must have been miles of black duct tape. I also was struck by the enterprise of FOS (Thomas Poulsen), who, in his show for the Max Wigram Gallery, had actually included a functioning pay bar.

As I started out by saying, the differences among these artists’ Statements are far more obvious than their similarities. But that’s to be celebrated, as is the fact that the cynicism that characterizes some of the work here is easily outweighed by the passionate engagement and exuberant intelligence of the rest of it.