Polish sculptor, installation artist, filmmaker, organizer of interventions, performance artist, action artist, painter. Born February 2, 1945, in Warsaw; resides in Łomianki-Dąbrowa near Warsaw.
Between 1963 and 1970 Kwiek studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw under professors Oskar Hansen and Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, obtaining his diploma in the studio of the latter. Between 1970 and 1988 he worked with Zofia Kulik under the guise of the KwieKulik artistic duo.
He has worked alone since 1987, expanding on both the formal and conceptual achievements of his years in the KwieKulik duo. He came to assign significance to a direction abandoned by Zofia Kulik in her own work, namely, that of direct reaction to and intervention in (through letters, protests, and actions) observed aberrations in public life. As during the KwieKulik years, Przemysław Kwiek continued to treat all "events in life" as material for his action art. His projects consisted of multi-media art in a variety of forms and he began to term them "appearances" beginning in his initial years as an independent artist. In the 1990s he expanded his repertoire to include traditional easel painting, which he treated very much untraditionally as yet another "intervening" activity. In addition, the artist is known within both the arts community at large and his local community as a social organizer and activist. In 1988 he contributed to creating the Stowarzyszenie Artystów Sztuk Innych (SASI - Association of Artists of the Alternate Arts), which he had planned for as early as 1980-1981. In 1994 and 2001 he provided the idea and was the SASI organizer for two editions of the "Polish National Festival of Appearances and Looks" at the National Museum in Warsaw.
Selected appearances and exhibitions:
- 1988 - Appearance no. 1 under an exhibition series titled "Take a Position" ("Zająć pozycję"), Office of Artistic Exhibitions (BWA), Lublin
- 1990 - "Interscop" International Meeting, Stodoła Gallery, Warsaw
- 1991 - International Art Festival: "Real Time - Story Telling", Office of Artistic Exhibitions (BWA), Sopot
- 1992 - "Transart Communication", Nove Zamky, Bratislava, Karlove Vary
- 1994 - "Imaginäres Hotel", Kunsthalle Elsterpark, Buntgarnwerke, Leipzig
- 1994 - 2nd International "Imagination Castle" Festival ("Zamek wyobraźni"), Bytów
- 1994 - "Oikos", Bydgoszcz Regional Museum
- 1997 - International Performance Festival, Art Fort Association (Fort Sztuki), Krakow
- 2001 - "Interactions" ("Interakcje") International Action Art Festival, Piotrków Trybunalski
Author: Maryla Sitkowska, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, December 2001.