Collection

The Balance Exercises series references visual instructions in old textbooks, such as first-aid manuals. Figures in illustrations produced in the first half of the 20^th century have hairstyles typical for the period, their facial details rendered in a characteristic manner. Karol Radziszewski has turned the series of tutorials into a set of ambiguous representations. In replicating drawings from old books on canvas, the artist emphasises the convention and canon of male corporeality renditions. The series is a sound match for the artist’s interest in the male body, consistently developed since his university years.

Creator of films, photographs, installations, and interdisciplinary projects; painter and draughtsman. A painting graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he co-founded the art and curatorship collective Latająca galeria szu szu (with Ivo Nikič and Piotr Kopik). He is publisher and editor-in-chief of DIK Fagazine. He frequently referenced popular culture in his early works, developing a recognisable comic book style: black outlines on white. He is inspired by random photographs as well as religious pictures, blending gay and erotic tropes in the resulting works. He created a series of paintings in recent years—replicas of his own childhood drawings. Apart from art, Radziszewski engages in research, dissemination, and publishing of works associated with Polish gay culture. He founded the Queer Archives Institute in 2015, an organisation with a focus on collecting and presenting art associated with the queer movement in Central & Eastern Europe. He received the Polityka Passport Award in 2009 and among other events participated in the Performa 13 Biennial in New York (2013). He lives and works in Warsaw.