Jakub Pieleszek, courtesy of the organisers
The exhibition presents Pieleszek's vision of paintings-objects - works of art which combine various techniques to create a new image of depth and symbolism
In his works Pieleszek combines different types of signs, symbols, popculture images and cut-outs, but they all refer to a concept that instantly familiar to most of us. Does their original meaning not matter to the artist? The topic of the project oscillates around the subject matter of advertisement, logo and a sign.
The artist plays with a plain ornament but all of them together form a decorative whole, creating compositions which would never occur naturally, such as placing a swastika and a peace sign next to each other. He contrasts them, combines them and strips them of their meaning. The patterns are not arranged into a one big whole, they are lacking a key to these new meanings. They seem to appear next to each other purely through coincidence. The familiar becomes once again abstract as the viewer makes a conscious effort to endow the new composition with a new meaning.
Pieleszek, like Barthes, doesn’t trust signs. He urges us to question them. According to the artist one must go back to the essence of the object and the sign should be pure. “The images I create", says Jakub Pieleszek "are quite like quotations, pieces of information, that may seem lapidary”.
Pieleszek’s works look like cut-outs made of wood. Is this the artist’s attempt to become part of the popular folk trend? In its traditional form the folk art is appealing to the contemporary artists as it combines all of the themes of the contemporary art, such as “expression, austerity as well as the idea of a sing in a ideographic form”. In fact, in Pieleszek’s works, the only true folk element is the cut-out. “Folk art uses the primitive yet more honest style of narrative", he says, "it flawlessly touches upon the language of our civilisation.”
Jakub Pieleszek was born in 1978, in Puławy. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań and Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He received his diploma in 2006 in Professor Henryk Cześnik’s studio, intermedia studio of Witosław Czerwonka and draft studio of PhD Associate Professor Piotr Józefefowicz He is involved in painting, installation, design, sound, film and sculpture. A space of various means gives him greater freedom of artistic expression.
He has had dozens of solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. He is the creator of several projects in public space and has been repeatedly awarded in competitions. In 2004 he received a scholarship of the Ministry of Culture and Arts. Since 2007 he has been an assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, in the PhD Associate Professor Krzysztof Gliszczyński. In 2009 he received a scholarship of Marshal of Pomeranian Voivodship. In 2010 again he received a scholarship of the Ministry of Culture and Arts. The latest project is commemoratingthe passion of collecting, it consists of the cycles of paintings-objects, which the author since 2005 has been continuously expanding.
The exhibition runs between the 9th of December, 2011 - 8th of January, 2012
Wozownia Art Gallery
ul. Św. Ducha 6
87-100 Toruń
tel. (+48) 56 622 63 39
www.wozownia.pl