PAWEŁ KOWALEWSKI
ZEITGEIST
Opening: 20.10.2017
Organisators: Propaganda Gallery and Museum Jerke
Project prepared in cooperation with St. Peter Church in Recklinghausen.
Paweł Kowalewski – born in 1958, in Warsaw. From 1978-1983, studied at the Department of Painting of the Fine Arts Academy of Warsaw, where he gained an honors diploma under the tutelage of Stefan Gierowski. From 1985 he works as an adjunct at the Industrial Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1982 he (along with Ryszard Grzyb, Jarosław Modzlewski, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Marek Sobczyk, Ryszard Woźniak) founded the artistic formation Gruppa; he actively participated in all of its exhibitions and actions, and was also co-editor of its publication, “Oj dobrze już”. The work of Kowalewski varies in type- it encompasses painting on canvas and on paper, cut-outs and sculpture (small-scale forms in polymer clay, shadowboxes), installations and readymades. Characteristic of his style is conceptual-dadaist commentary, which the artist affixes to his works. Bands pinned to his canvases, or the titles of exhibited works he uses as a counterpoint to the reality that is pictured, as a place that serves as a comment on the subject of pertinent historical or political events. The latter, along with the topic of existence in general, formed an unusually important point of reference in the work of Kowalewski. Several paintings of this current became icons of 1980′s painting (i.e. Mon cheri bolsheviq). From the 1990′s he has been creating a series of collages in which he focuses on the aesthetic of the everyday: Exercises in the aesthetic in which I was brought up, Landmarks to follow while escaping madness.