Cezary Poniatowski
Gorgoyled Guardians - @ Warsaw Old Town
Gorgoyled Guardians - @ Warsaw Old Town
BIO
A visual, graphic, and installation artist, he graduated from the Graphic Arts Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. His work consists largely of subdued yet expressive works made from everyday materials such as leather, foam, and carpets, as well as compositions on paper that are just as formally spare. Poniatowski’s work connects the past with the present, exploring relationships between the mass-produced and the used, the anonymous and the personal. As such, they create fluid yet provocative boundaries between the outer and inner worlds. His works combine features of painting, sculpture, and installation, and have a powerful effect on a space, commanding attention and redefining the surroundings.
Artwork
Gorgoyled Guardians, pressed polystyrene, 2024
Gorgoyled Guardians comes from a series of reliefs in which the artist goes beyond the limits of flat painting, their compositions extending into the depths of the space. To create them, Poniatowski turns to unusual materials, such as faux leather and carpets, construction materials, such as extruded polystyrene, which is an insulator, and everyday objects. His materials evoke the space of the home, in which everyday life goes on and which reflects human presence. On the one hand, these works preserve the memory of people and the traces they leave; on the other, they recall fragments of architecture and the remnants of buildings, giving them the feel of archaeological digs yet to be discovered. This makes his reliefs specters of the past and the present, they have a totemic quality. Although made of everyday objects that are familiar, they take the form of a chapel that cannot be attributed to any particular religion or culture. They are negatives of reality, bearers of memory, of layered and processed emotions.