Years of education | Michał Zawada

Artist

Michał Zawada

ABOUT EXHIBITION

We invite you to the exhibition of works by Michał Zawada titled “Summer of Science”.
The vernissage will take place on October 14 from 18:00 to 21:00.

Michał Zawada
Years of study.
Nova Gallery, street Batory 2. October 15, 2011 – November 15, 2011.

Years of study is a very personal summary of the dilemmas of a graduate of two fields focused on art, but using completely different tools. The struggles with the place between theory and practice gave an effect in the form of works that, apart from the subtle aesthetic layer, carry a huge intellectual bag that gives them a different value.
Michał Zawada engages in a debate with the authorities of history of art and great theories, which often overwhelm their constituted position in the pantheon of knowledge, but also go beyond the rationality of science, become a intellectualized discussion of non-existent artifacts. Zawada uses artistic tools that are convenient to her and play with the seriousness of learning, balancing between irony and respect for the theory of the image. He confronts the understanding of art history as a science trying to explain what art really is – an ephemeral, undefined, undecipherable thing, a flash of genius, often reduced to schematic, standardized formulas and simple explanations.
When traveling through the meanders of research on image, it is led by Aby Warburg, whose research creating a new quality of understanding and analyzing the image has been forgotten for years. Also undermined by Warburg’s renowned student Erwin Panofsky, who tried to bring the picture to a set of concrete conclusions and read it to the end. Warburg questioned the possibility of explaining the image, a separate, changeable being, which is constantly becoming anew depending on cultural, social or political contexts. The science of the creator of the Atlas Mnemosyne today is returning to the minds of image researchers. Belting and Didi-Huberman create their contemporary theories from the thought of Warburgianska.
With Michał Zawada, the lack of a picture becomes a new quality. It is a value in itself. An empty place on the stolen Monie Lisa, a break from the ruined Buddha statue brings a new load of meanings while maintaining the previous visual context. Loss of the iconic image creates new structures of relationships and contexts without valuing them. The place itself is so intensely marked by the past object that the picture is still in it. The same is true of the empty-gaping tables of the Atlas, where “boards” cut by the artist acquire an aesthetic sense and lack is a separate entity.
Overlapping images, breaking colors, fading or disappearing completely means analyzing not only the image as a living process, a phenomenon of culture, but also as a metaphysical carrier of meanings, memory and oblivion.

MICHAŁ ZAWADA (1985) lives and works in Krakow.

Education:
2010-2013 – Environmental Doctoral Studies, Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.
2005-2010 – Studies at the Faculty of Painting in the studio of Prof. Andrzej Bednarczyk, Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.
2004-2009 – Studies in Art History, Jagiellonian University.

scholarships:
2008 – Laureate artistic scholarship Janina Kraupe-Świderska
2004 – Laureate of the Jagiellonian University Rector’s scholarship for winners of the Olympics

Selected individual exhibitions:
2010 – Za-jump, photo exhibition, Jewish Community Center, Krakow
2009 – Cienie, gallery Art Agenda Nova, Krakow

Selected group exhibitions:
2011 – In dunkeln Wäldern, HangArt -7, Salzburg
2010 – Sommerreise / Winterreise, painting exhibition of Hanna Śliwińska and Michał Zawada, gallery Bestregarts, Frankfurt am Mein
2009 – Exhibition of the studio by prof. A. Bednarczyk, TCK, Tarnowskie Góry
2009 – 306. Exhibition of the studio. A. Bednarczyk, Floriańska 22 gallery, Cracow
2009 – New Art Summer, Art Agenda Nova gallery, Krakow
2008 – Półmetek, Open Workshop gallery, Cracow
2009 – Poligon, Municipal Cultural Center, Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski