OSKAR DAWICKI – Two Pieces Too Little

exhibition leaflet (pdf) – click to download

Oskar Dawicki. Two Pieces Too Little

Oskar Dawicki’s exhibition titled “Two Pieces Too Little” presented in the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok is the third presentation (after Art Stations gallery in Stary Browar, Poznań http://www.artstationsfoundation5050.com/en/event/2013_01oskarand Raster Gallery in Warsaw http://en.rastergallery.com/wystawy/oskar-dawickio-jedna-prace-za-malo/) related to Performer, a feature film which has not yet had its première. It is, similarly to the biographical novel Half empty, a part of Dawicki’s artistic persona.

In the film Dawicki plays himself: an artist, performer, creator of a total creation, where art and life merge into one. The fleeting success and its ridiculousness, the exhausting premonition of failure, the dead body hidden under the red carpet, the faded sham – all this form a message of the artist’s condition conveyed by Dawicki, who becomes the court jester performing a grand patriotic gesture.

He analyses his assets and weaknesses with a mocking sense of humour bordering on the absurd. He makes ironic comments on the embarrassment while at the same time being dangerously close to it. Like in a self-fulfilling prophecy, the failure seems to be inevitable. In the video advertising the “One Piece Too Little” in the Raster Gallery Dawicki suggested that the audience stayed at home. Why come to the gallery, when “the” work is not there? It seems that it can’t get any worse… But it surely can, as the optimists say.

The film you will not see in the Arsenal Gallery:

PERFORMER

title role: Oskar Dawicki

written and directed by: Maciej Sobieszczański and Łukasz Ronduda

production: Wajda Studio

co-production: Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk

co-producers: Telewizja Polska SA, Heliograf, Film Factory, Artcore

co-financing: Polish Film Institute

Oskar Dawicki (born 1971) was educated as a painter, but already during his studies in the Fine Arts Department at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun he became interested in performance art, which he remained faithful to during the following years. In 2000, he broadened his scope of interest onto video works, photography, documentation and, finally, objects and installations. All of his works have a post-conceptual character and emanate a slightly grotesque, ironic and even absurd aura. Dawicki joins in his works a romantically-tragic component (highly saturated with his own existential dilemmas) with poetics and the critical dimension of conceptual art. The self-reflection over his own institutional status as a contemporary artist is tightly interwoven with reflection on his own identity, or rather on its transitoriness, conventionality, airiness and weakness. Discomfort, disagreement, complication – these are the terms on which this artist’s imagination is founded, while the non-productivity of art seems to Dawicki to be its most promising aspect.

2000 – 2010 a co-founder and member of Azorro group

2013

– One piece too little, Raster, Warsaw, Poland

– Performer, Art Stations Foundation, Poznań, Poland

– Ćwiczenia z aktywnej nieobecności, Galeria Centrum Kultury i Sztuki “Wieża Ciśnień”, Konin, Poland

2012

– Doubt is not a Trumpet, 11th Baltic Triennial of International Art, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania

2011

– What is wrong with Oskar Dawicki?, FAICA, Bratislava, Slovakia

– Phantom Pain, Postmasters, New York, US

– Warpechowski / Dawicki, Muzeum Sztuki ms, Łódź, Poland

2010

– The Last Polish Artist, Gambia Castle, Auckland, New Zealand

– Horror Kurort Vacui, Panstwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot, Poland

2009

– Fruit of Anxiety, Vegetable of Calm, Raster, Warsaw, Poland

2008

– 10.000 PLN, Witryna, Warsaw, Poland

– Coullises, Espace Piano Nobile, Genève, CH

– Drugie dno, BWA Gallery, Zielona Gora, Poland

2007

– Salon Piege, Polish Institute, Paris, France

– Furnishing the trap-apartment, Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland

– Folkwang Museum, RWE Turm, Essen, Germany

2005

– Untitled, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

– Ten Years of Painting I & III, Raster, Warsaw, Poland

– Ten Years of Painting, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, Krakow, Poland

2004

– Armageddon, Potocka Gallery, Krakow, Poland

2003

– Vernissage, Raster, Warsaw, Poland

– “O”, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland

WORKS IN COLLECTIONS:

– The National Museum, Warsaw, Poland

– Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland

– Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland

– MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Cracow, Poland

– Centre for Contemporary Art, Toruń, Poland

– Bunkier Sztuki, Cracow, Poland

– Galeria Arsenał, Białystok, Poland

– The ING Polish Art Foundation Collection, Warszawa, Poland
 

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