Chlanda studied in the Graphic Arts Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, graduating from the school in 1978. He went on to teach at his alma mater (1980-1982) and subsequently pursued an experiment referred to as the traveling academy (1983-1984) with students from the university in Bergen (Norway). He also lectured for a time at the branch of the University of Silesia located in the border city of Cieszyn (1986-1988).
He debuted in the mid 1970s as a draftsman. From the very beginning of his creative career, Chlanda explored the concept of process, combining his drawings with art forms like performance, concerts, extensive documentation. A second distinguishing feature of his art was his inclusion of variegated objects in his works on paper. These ranged from pieces of fur, through wooden blocks and strips, to segments of rope, and the like. These experiments eventually prompted him to create installations. One of his first works of this type was Epifania / Epiphany, created for the Young Artists' Biennale in Paris in 1980. In the 1980s the artist gradually abandoned his beginnings as a draftsman on one hand and action artist on the other, focusing instead on sculpture and on organizing space using a series of signifying elements. For these installations he used natural materials like unfinished wood, wax, tar products, iron and the like. His objects were distinguishable for their specific structure: consisting of multiple elements, Chlanda usually spread these across floors or arranged them as crawling pieces, leaning against walls as staircases might. Both their arrangement and in their titles seemed to invite references to literary tradition, history and mythology; however, the works never crossed the line into literal reference. In his series of "kompozycje analogowe" / "analogue compositions" dating from the 1990s, he focused on inter-personal relationships, doing so in the mysterious and allusive manner that was so characteristic of him.
The artist has been exhibiting actively since 1974. He has had several dozen individual presentations, among them an exhibition at the Muzeum Sztuki (Museum of Art) in Lodz in 1985 and the exhibition Miejsca rzeźby. Beuys, Chlanda, Rabinowitch / Places of Sculpture - Beuys, Chlanda, Rabinowitch, at the Muzeum ASP (Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts) in Warsaw in 1988. Chlanda has additionally participated in a vast number of group exhibitions. He is also a recipient of the Nowosielski Foundation Prize.
For over thirty years now, Marek Chlanda has been presenting his work in the form of unique constructs composing a whole made up of multiple component parts, primarily paintings, drawings, sculptures and objects. They find reflection in various quotations drawn from the traditions of culture, history, art, literature and philosophy, augmented by the artist’s own commentary. Within this collection of aphorisms, fragments of though, quotations and notations of contemplations, there is no fixed hierarchy of utility or chronology. The relationship between the visual layers of Chlanda’s work and the semantic and verbal aspect is illuminative here, not illustrative. In so being, the visible thoughts, commentaries and quotations assume the quality of a ‘flash’, as Wojciech Suchocki put it. In avoiding literalness in favour of mystery and allusion, Chlanda succeeds in maintaining the autonomy of both means of expression in such a way as to ensure that his commentary never emphatically determines our attempts at reading the meanings. Jaromir Jedliński has written that: … Chlanda’s method of work involves operating analogues. The substance of the work constitutes an investigation of the relationship between original and copy, between vision and image, the interior and exterior drawing, reality and illusion. The parity of various times, places, feelings, thoughts and emotions, as well as the affinity of identity, marks the artist’s steps in this process. Chlanda himself says that he “also engages in visual realisation, when, for instance, as regards a painting, a given image is enriched by his individual sense of visibility and thought.
Uzdrowisko (Spa Town), 2011–2012 consists of 253 pictures on canvas and paper and includes several spatial objects related to the images. They were arranged in 34 fragments. An indicative sentence: by means of art, I work on a form of living; it has a range of consequences; I acknowledge art as a tool and an artwork as an instrument which serves, aids and heals. And it is enough to treat them as an extension of the body in order to grasp their hybrid properties; they enhance and shine a light on the sensation that subject and object are constantly shifting.
Marek Chlanda has never belonged to those artists who create unambiguously political or critical works. Nor has he engaged in any political movements. His distanced and ironic perspective towards the surrounding reality, both socio–political and the one concerning the world of art, however, has not been left without an impact on his projects. Yet, this separateness, in fact, presents problems with the classification of Chlanda's artwork according to the traditional genres of art. Drawings, sculptures, objects – Marek Chlanda's works escape these unambiguous categories.
The starting point of the exhibition was one of the artist's latest projects, called A Study of Obedience (2018). The work was created in Nowa Huta, at the time of dismantling The School of Utopia, a project which was half the exhibition, half the theatre, realized in the spaces of the abandoned wing of the former Technical–Secondary Electrical School. The Study was created in a way as a side effect of The School of Utopia moving out. The installation appeared in the space of one of the school classrooms, practically without viewers.
The exhibition of Marek Chlanda, an artist whose work in various ways is associated with the history of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, revolved around the topics set by A Study of Obedience. It combined historical elements with contemporary ones. It followed the artist and his research processes. It examined the maps he has left, sketchbooks, traffic records, and traces of gestures. It opened to his sensual and intuitive associations. It looked for traces of choreographic strategies within different families of works. It referred to the assembly tools rather than thoughts about the composition of space and chronology.
The artistic practice of Chlanda is a continuous research process, based on wandering, erring and finally fully identifying the forms of life with the forms of art. What becomes the very subject of examination is the artist himself and his own corporality, as well as the relations between the objects arising within and from the space.