Collection

“Monday, me. Tuesday, me. Wednesday, me.” Włodzimierz Pawlak seems to be emulating the writer Witold Gombrowicz in his journal of paintings, a personal and colourful account of one day after another. Gombrowicz claimed that “a painter dissects the visible world into elements of colour and shape, arranging them in new and arbitrary compositions.” Pawlak’s artworks seem to contain references to such a perception of the creative process. His pure colours and expressive tonal compositions yield no separate narrative, their nature abstract and unfalteringly arbitrary.

Painter, creator of objects, performance artist, teacher. He is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and a co-founder of Gruppa, a famous art collective of the 1980s. This was also when he created a series of final diploma images he intended to paint over in the presence of the examination committee, in a gesture of solidarity with the authors of political slogans painted over on walls of buildings across the city. Pieces in the cycle are coated with a layer of masking paint covering the composition itself. Ever since, his work has included political and social motifs, as well as tropes of the role and agency of art. He was awarded the Grand Prix of the 22^nd International Festival of Painting in Cagnes-sur-Mer for his Journals cycle in 1990, and the Jan Cybis Award in 2017. He lives and works in Korytów.