events main gallery | 21.11—11.1.15

Kowalski’s Smithy. Works from the archive of Grzegorz Kowalski’s studio

The exhibition is being held concurrently with the 23rd Festival Ars Cameralis and will be available for viewing in two galleries:

1. Films by graduates working in the studio of Grzegorz Kowalski will be presented in the ‘Rondo Sztuki’ gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice.
2. Works from the archive of Grzegorz Kowalski’s studio will be presented in the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery.

‘Along with his artistic output, Grzegorz Kowalski also rated his achievement in establishing his unique teaching method that he liked to call “education in partnership”. Its principles began to take shape in the early years of his teaching career, when he worked under Professor Jarnuszkiewicz, enriching the programme of his studio with novel artistic practices that were based on cooperation and pursuit of a non-verbal language of communication. From 1980 to 1985 he worked at the Faculty of Design, where he created the fundamentals and carried out the first realisations of his original educational program Common Space. Individual Space (Obszar wspólny. Obszar własny) still continues at the Faculty of Sculpture. In recent years, he has taken up a new cyclical task entitled Next (Następny), whose temporary and sequential nature fits perfectly into the studio of audiovisual space. As early as the 1990s, this new endeavour led to the emergence of a group of his students, which critics labelled Kowalnia/Kowalski’s Smithy, and whose creations have left a permanent mark on recent Polish art, contributing to the achievements of so called ‘critical art’. Graduates of Kowalski’s studio include many artists who have gained wide reknown, such as Paweł Althamer, Katarzyna Kozyra, Jacek Markiewicz (diplomas in 1993), Katarzyna Górna, Jędrzej Niestrój (diplomas in 1994), Mariusz Maciejewski, Artur Żmijewski (diplomas in 1995), Monika Zielińska Mamzeta (diploma in 1996), Anna Konik, Anna Niesterowicz (diplomas in 2000), Czesław Kałużny, Andrzej Kokosza (diplomas in 2003), Ewa Łuczak (diploma in 2006), Cezary Koczwarski, Anna Molska, Piotr Wysocki (diplomas in  2008).’

Maryla Sitkowska
(a fragment of an article published on Culture.pl)

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