Collection

The ING Polish Art Foundation invited Oskar Dawicki to join the Art in Our Age book project. The publication was intended to provide answers to fundamental questions regarding contemporary art. The artist was asked to write a text explaining inspiration and its importance to artists, in relatively easy terms. Dawicki responded to the inspiration-related question subversively, yet amazingly sincerely. Consequently, a piece in itself ascertaining the need for inspiration was produced, albeit the notion as such is considered outdated and a poor match for contemporary art. The work, ultimately published as a standalone chapter in the book and made part of the Foundation’s collection, comprises elements typical of Dawicki’s oeuvre: humour combined with an ironic approach to the audience, the author, and the task at hand.

Performance artist, draughtsman, creator of films, videos, and installations. A graduate of the Fine Arts Faculty at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and co-founder of the Azorro Supergroup. Despite his background in painting, he is primarily known as a performance artist. His oeuvre is immersed in the poetics of the absurd, the grotesque and irony, and strongly post-conceptual. Frequent motifs include reflection on the status of the artist and ponderings on transience. Dawicki claims Zbigniew Warpechowski, the doyen of performance art in Poland, as a key figure to his artistic identity. He is the protagonist of the novel W połowie puste (Half-Empty, 2011) by Łukasz Gorczyca and Łukasz Ronduda, and of a film where he plays himself, Performer (2015) by Łukasz Ronduda and Maciej Sobieszczański, and the patron of the sculpture Monument to Neurotics: Oskar’s Puddle by Rafał Bujnowski, unveiled in 2019 at Al. Ujazdowskie 4 in Warsaw. He participated in Manifesta 7 in 2008. He lives and works in Warsaw.