Collection

Oskar Dawicki

Tree of Knowledge

2008, video, 4’

The film opens with a scene of a performance artist breaking into the Garden of Paradise to re-enact the sin of biblical ancestors. Hooliganism is blown up beyond proportion and into the grotesque. While Oskar Dawicki does not commit the original sin and eat the forbidden apple, he takes a bite out of each apple in the tree, spitting out the sour pulp every time. In his work, he was inspired among other things by the thought of Emil Cioran, who claimed that the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge must have been unripe. The brief philosophical treatise is a kind of apocrypha, where human curiosity and sinful temptation are confronted with dogmas of faith. As the artist explained in an interview, “This is an icon of the end, of exhaustion, of a vacuum, all of which appear in what I do in assorted configurations.”

Oskar Dawicki

b. 1971, Krakow

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.

b. 1971, Krakow

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.

I agree to the processing of data in accordance with the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please disable cookies in your browser. More →

Changes to the Privacy Policy


In accordance with the legal requirements imposed by the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU) 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and repealing of the Directive 95/46/WE, a new Privacy Policy applies on this Website, which contains all information regarding the collection, processing, and protection of personal data of users of this Website.

Furthermore, we remind you that for the correct operation of the website we use information stored in cookie files. You can change the cookies settings in the settings of your browser. If you do not agree to the use of cookies on this Website, please change the settings in your browser or leave the Website.

Privacy Policy