Between 1978 and 1983 Kowalewski was a student in the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He studied under Stefan Gierowski and graduated with honors. By the time he obtained his diploma, he was already a member of the Gruppa arts group, with which he first became involved in 1982. He participated in all of Gruppa's subsequent exhibitions and actions, and he served as a co-publisher of the group's periodical titled "Oj dobrze już" / "All Right Already" (7 issues between 1984 and 1988). Since 1985 he has been an instructor in the Industrial Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1991 he founded his own advertising agency, which he runs to this day.
Kowalewski works in many different genres. These range from painting on canvass and paper, through sculpting (small forms in modeling clay), to installations and ready-made objects during his most recent period of public activity. All of these realms seemed to play a part already in his multi-part and formally expansive thesis project titled Sztuka osobista czyli prywatna / Personal Art aka Private Art (1983). The core of the project consisted of small format paintings presenting mostly individual figures and objects against a neutral background. Their meaning was embellished by titles painted on white canvass bands that the artist attached to the canvass stretchers, thus making them resemble over-sized captions that one might see at an exhibition. The motifs in the paintings explained little, suggesting that the code according to which they could be read was indeed strictly personal, known only to the author. On the other hand, the attached titles ("Ja zastrzelony przez Indian" / "Me Shot by Indians," "Pięści w kieszeniach czyli bardzo wkurwiony robotnik" / "Fists in the Pockets, or the Extremely Pissed Off Worker," "Zdzicho skacze co noc z butelkami z benzyna" / "Zdzicho Jumps Out Every Night with Bottles of Gasoline," "Detalogia z odchyleniem" / "Inflated Egos with Deviation" and others) purposely referred to the threatening, protest-ridden aura of the times. Kowalewski employed a similar way of using words ironically to undermine the meaning of his paintings in a series of large format works he referred to as "papers" (1984-1985), on which he painted quotations from the Psalms as translated (anew at the time) by Czesław Miłosz. The gap between the two spheres - that of the image and word - was so large that the works were condemned by the Catholic Church as being nearly blasphemous. The artist provided an exceptional demonstration of his sarcasm and sense of word-based paradox in the compositions Podaj gwoździa / Pass Me a Nail (1987) and Gdzie powiesić Matkę Boską? / Where Do We Hang the Mother Mary? (1989).
Until 1989 Kowalewski's paintings were figurative as well as expressive in form and color. Dominant subjects included literary, historic and patriotic references, which were summarized in the beautiful, nostalgia-filled "Cykl litewski" / "Lithuanian Series" (1988-1989). However, the artist never strayed far from existential issues and subjects drawn from everyday reality. The latter were more strongly expressed in a series of small sculptures which he enclosed in glass cases (1989-1990), and subsequently in his paintings and collages and in the installations Kowalewski assembled out of these. These works formed several series that he titled "Ćwiczenia z estetyki, w jakiej wzrastałem" / "Exercises in the Aesthetic with Which I Grew Up," "Znaki orientacyjne, które są konieczne, by uniknać szaleństwa" / "Orientating Signs that are Necessary to Avoid Madness," and "Fin de siecle" (1990-1992). After 1992 the artist ceased showing new work, electing to participate solely in historical and retrospective exhibitions.
Selected exhibitions and awards:
- 1985 and 1987 - 1st and 2nd Biennale "The Path and the Truth, Holy Cross Church, Wrocław (honorable mention in 1987)
- 1985 - 1st Biennale of New Art, Zielona Góra
- 1986 - "Ekspresja lat 80-tych / Expressionism of the 1980s", BWA (Office of Art Exhibitions), Sopot
- 1987 - "Co słychać / What's Up?" Former Norblin Factory, Warsaw
- 1990/1991- "Coż po artyscie w czasie marnym / And What of the Artist in Dismal Times, Zachęta National Contemporary Art Gallery, Warsaw, National Museum, Krakow
- 1992 - "Gruppa 1982-1991", Zachęta National Contemporary Art Gallery, Warsaw
Author: Maryla Sitkowska, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, June 2002.