Kiev Hold On! From NYC to Kiev. Jan Bajtlik and Pawel Althamer performance @ New Museum. Feb 19, 2014.

I have to share this wonderful photograph. Jan Bajtlik and an important message at Pawel Althamer's exhibition at the New Museum.  Here's is a video of the performance, please watch: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZUIbV8jvu8#t=17

Kaja Renkas in STL April 4

Infirmary of the Subconscious

Contemporary Polish Posters by Kaja Renkas

- at the -

Exhibition Opening March 7 at 6:00 pm

Artist Reception: April 4 at 7:00 pm

Special Guest Performance April 4 at 10:00 pm featuring Rob Mazurek and Darin Gray

More info coming soon 

http://kajarenkas.w.interia.pl/
http://tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com/

Ewa Budka in STL March 28 at Hoffman LaChance Contemporary

The Skin I Have Been Living In

Mokulito-Lithography on the Wood of Ewa Budka (Budkalito)

Opening reception Friday, February 28, 6-10 pm

at Hoffman LaChance Contemporary

2713 Sutton Boulevard, St. Louis 63143 

When the human body is cut, the skin begins a new story: a story of the past, pain, restoration, memory, and the scar. This story is a universal lesson of pure reality. Budka illuminates these stories by replacing the cold, lifeless lithographer’s stone with swelling, breathing wood—wood that already has its own life story embedded within its grain. The wood absorbs Budka’s drawings and incantations forming an emotive picture of primal instincts, a cosmos of natural reactions—pain, frustration, animality, sexuality and love. But it is the skin that tells the body’s story. In Budka’s work the wood is the body and the paper becomes the skin that retains and maps the imprint of affectivity within the matrix of its own cellular structure.

Pioneering an Earth-friendly approach to the lithographic process, the alchemy of Mokulito allows Ewa to substitute water for chemicals. While printer’s ink sticks to the applied oil-based mediums (crayons, markers, pencils, and paint) water repels the ink from the untouched areas of the wood body keeping the original image intact for multiple printings and further manipulation.

Ewa Budka is a Master printmaker and fashion model. She graduated in May 2013 from the Department of Graphic Art and Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw with the Rector's honors. Hoffman LaChance Contemporary is proud to host her show “The Skin I Have Been Living In” while she fulfills her residency at Paul Art Space.

http://www.ewabudka.com/

Text provided by Chris Smentkowski, curator for Polish arts and culture in St. Louis, Missouri

First Worms, Entire Forest at Underdonk in NYC

First Worms, Entire Forest

Anna Minx and Chris Smentkowski

February 22 through March 23, 2014

at Underdonk Gallery 

1717 Troutman Street, Brooklyn, New York 11385

Opening reception: February 22, 6:00 pm

Piling on, as a human process, suggests a sort of compulsion; a potentially incarcerating habit of constant resurfacing, a refusal to settle for what’s already here. In her relief paintings, Anna Minx piles on and mingles contemporary and ancient landscapes with suggestions of the corporeal, placing tactile drips, pools and peaks alongside hints of manicured fingertips and static bare tendons. The resulting shapes reach and push in self-contained momentum, paused like fossilized bodies of our oldest animals, resisting the confinement of an eternal cycle. 

Chris Smentkowski’s work spans time materially and in the stories it implies. His ceramics are rolled and pounded into the soil behind his studio while wet clay, picking up odd bits of debris in the process. These collected bits are burnt out when fired, creating pocked impressions of dirt, and doubling the earth-memory of the clay. This sense of being earthbound is reconsidered in his paintings, which are inspired by memories of his travels through the Podhale region of southern Poland. Suggestive of an imagination wandering the woods, catching itself in branches, and an airy, bodiless freedom, they discount any assumption that we return wholly to the earth. 

These works together engage a particular psychology and aesthetic of confinement and liberation – animal and geologic, the young and the old, the living and the dead. Minx and Smentkowski create images and objects that we might be born knowing, or know before we die - a series of first and last images. Very old people, trees, and tectonic plates, and conversely, newborns, sprouts, and earthquakes - they don’t tell you everything they know, but you would listen if they did.

An interesting find (in English)

an interesting article:
http://www.news.cricoteka.pl/tomasz-kowalski-posters/
enjoy!

Tomasz Kowalski has a solo show up at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
He's a very nice person with great taste in music... I met with him for a bit while he was here.

In the meantime, here are two Polish art blogs he recommends:
http://magazynszum.pl/
and
http://www.biweekly.pl/
Of course, one should not forget Obieg:
http://www.obieg.pl/

And some of his work:

I'll post more information here soon.

Jan Bajtlik's Etsy Page

Young Polish poster designer Jan Bajtlik has an Etsy page. Take a look: http://www.etsy.com/shop/JanBajtlik?ref=l2-shopheader-name

Co widać? Polska sztuka dzisiaj.

Co widać. Polska sztuka dzisiaj | As You Can See. Polish Art Today
Feb 14 @  Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie/ Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
https://www.facebook.com/events/704570496241984/


Apologies for not posting during the holidays -- it is my time away from the computer.  I am also preparing for an exhibition of my own work at a gallery in Brooklyn, Feb 22. More info will be posted here.

Michał Jankowski (1977 - Current)

(1977 - Current)

Studied at the University of Zielona Góra with degree in Painting under the supervision of
Prof. Lech Knaflewski. Graduated in 2005.

Michał Jankowski’s paintings are focused details of a larger story where the imagery of fantasy and melancholy intertwine.

Zbigniew Kaja retrospective opens at the National Museum in Poznan.

I just received the book for this exhibition, I'll post some pictures here soon. In the meantime, here's an article: http://www.rp.pl/artykul/9131,1073535-Sztuka-jako-przyjemnosc.html

Rafał Olbiński in SoHo, NYC 12/11/13-1/11/14

http://culture.pl/en/article/painter-rafal-olbinski-in-soho

Julita Wojcik (1971 – Current)

Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, graduated in 1997 

The rainbow sculpture, "Tęcza" is undoubtedly her most notorious and important work to date. Perhaps subconsciously retelling the story of Poland’s regrowth after periods of devastation, Tęcza, often plundered and vandalized, gets resurrected, remaining an icon of positivity and hopefulness. Read more here: http://culture.pl/en/article/outlaw-art-11-wanted-for-scandal.

Posters Are Sexy series by Ryszard Kaja: Collection of Chris Smentkowski

Jan Henryk de Rosen

I have been granted permission to curate an exhibition from the Ravenna Mosaic archives at Saint Louis University's Pius XII Memorial Library on celebrated Polish muralist, exile, and war veteran, Jan Henryk de Rosen. Jan Henryk de Rosen designed the main dome at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis -- it is often hailed as the largest mosaic in the world.  More info to come soon.

Against All Odds: Polish Graphic Design 1919-1949, Piotr Rypson. Karakter Press

Against All Odds: Polish Graphic Design 1919-1949, Piotr Rypson. Karakter Press, 2011

Jarek Czernikiewicz obtained a copy of this book for me. It is a really thorough and amazing volume on interwar Polish graphic design.  I am working on bringing this author to SLU's International Studies Department for a lecture in association with Saint Louis Polonia.

Please read more here: http://www.printmag.com/design-inspiration/polish-graphic-design-illustrated/

Marlena Kudlicka, The Weight of 8 at Zak | Branicka gallery 6/21/13 - 8/31/13

MARLENA KUDLICKA | THE WEIGHT OF 8
21/06/2013 - 31/08/2013
http://zak-branicka.com/exhibitions.php

Joanna Zastróżna (1972 - Current)

Joanna Zastróżna (1972 - Current)

Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, graduating in 1997

Her photography mainly consists of negatives that have been drawn on and colored in a distinct colorful fashion that often involves images of humans and/or animals suggesting injury, perversion, and trespass. Bodily fluids, nudity, bandages and other medical equipment often appear in her experimental work which is influenced by and reminiscent of radiographs and X-rays.

Her website: www.zastrozna.asia

Greatest hits from the Polona digital library

The National Library’s Digital Polona collection:
http://www.culture.pl/web/english/resources-literature-full-page/-/eo_event_asset_publisher/eAN5/content/greatest-hits-from-the-polona-digital-library

Marta Deskur (1962 - Current)

Marta Deskur (1962 - Current)

Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow.
Studied at École des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence, France. 

Marta Deskur's light box installations capture tension and straining force through composition and through positive vs. negative values. Almost all these works have a unique omission, this omission suggests a metaphysics only implied or suggested, certainly not tangible.  More information on her work here: http://www.culture.pl/web/english/resources-visual-arts-full-page/-/eo_event_asset_publisher/eAN5/content/marta-deskur

Władysław Hasior (1928 - 1999)

Władysław Hasior (1928 - 1999)

Studied under Professor Antoni Kenar at the State Secondary School of Visual Art Techniques in Zakopane.

Studied under Marian Wnuk in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.  

Studied under Ossip Zadkine in Paris. 

Hasior may be my favorite artist of all time. How could I not love an artist who sets the majority of his public works on fire at the opening?  In Zakopane I had the honor of visiting both his grave and his studio-turned-gallery as well as the Hasoir collection at the National Museum in Wroclaw and Krakow, Poland.  A local Zakopane girl said it best when she described his work as "devastating." In my opinion his sculptural works are surreal abstractions of the Podhale region's folk art, but certainly still devastating on many levels.  I could go on and on about the relevance and importance of Hasior's work, but there is enough already out there in internetland on Hasior to help you form your own ideas. However, nothing compares to seeing his work in person.   Many of the photos below I took while travelling in Poland.

A quick bit of trivia:  A pair of students used found rusted scraps of Hasior's Firebird sculpture for their MFA exhibit, mostly to show the poor and forgotten condition of the sculpture, calling for a restoration of the work.   

The Władysław Hasior Gallery, Tatra Museum, Zakopane

Firebirds: A young Hasior flees the scene after igniting his sculpture at the opening (lower right corner)

Hasior's grave in the old cemetery, Zakopane (designed by his students)