Wojciech Ireneusz Sobczyk
Lucretia from the Laboratory series - @ Cracow Old Town
Lucretia from the Laboratory series - @ Cracow Old Town
Lucretia from the Laboratory series - @ Cracow Old Town
Devil I, from the Lucretia series - @ Cracow Old Town
Lucretia from the Laboratory series - @ Cracow Old Town
BIO
Visual artist tied to Krakow, where he studied printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts. He received a PhD from his alma mater, and presently works as an assistant professor at the Pedagogical University in Krakow. He received a scholarship from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. His solo exhibitions have included Of Vain Fame and the Fleeting Taste of (Wild) Strawberries at LETO Gallery and An Atlas of Weeds at Labirynt Gallery in Lublin. He has participated in numerous collective exhibitions. He makes sculptures, installations, animation, music, and studio graphics. His artistic practice draws from classical or even archaic techniques, themes, and iconography. His interests include humanism in its broadest sense. He creates an animated documentation of time, a record of emotional states, a study of experiencing and learning about the natural world and human nature with regard to history and the present. He is represented by Warsaw’s LETO gallery.
Artwork
Lucretia, from the Laboratory series, mixed techniques: porcelain, silver, gold, salt, glass, wood, 2018
Devil I, from the Lucretia series, 2018, collage
Wojciech Ireneusz Sobczyk collects old objects, natural specimens, and history. His objects are painstakingly created from a variety of traditional techniques, such as intarsia, textiles, ceramics, and porcelain. In the last he has achieved remarkable precision, creating organic objects resembling flora: mushrooms, lichen, vines. In the Laboratory series, he puts these porcelain objects in glass cases, creating the illusion of biological specimens. He joins them with stories mythology and old legends, as with the Lucretia sculpture from the Hotel PURO collection. The titular Lucretia was a legendary figure in the sixth century CE, the daughter of a Roman patriarch, who, in her husband’s absence, was terrorized and raped by his political opponent. Unable to cope with this situation, she committed suicide. According to legend, her rape was the direct cause of the uprising led by Brutus, the overthrow of the monarchy, and the creation of the Roman republic. Sobczyk’s sculpture looks like an ancient marble figure left in the sea and overgrown with organic forms.