Mateusz Sadowski (born 1984) freely uses video, photography and installations to create works featuring simple elements of everyday life, elements that, as Michał Lasota wrote – “once obtained from the chaos of reality, undergo ‘magnification’ and become overgrown with abstract and poetic connotations.”
The meeting of cool abstraction with intimate lyricism also determines the space of Sadowski’s exposition, an example of which may be the exhibition Fire (2009) at Poznań’s Stereo gallery (which now represents him). Lasota wrote about the exposition:
“Sadowski often alludes to the natural scenery from which he derives his poetics,” and “penetrates the forest as an archetypal region, visits it in dream, and transforms images of nature into a mental code, creating his own contemplative intense images, often undercut by some erotic element.”
This characteristic of Sadowski’s works emphasised by the critics – the tension between sensual experience and intellectual construction, takes the form of a mixture – a sensuous photographic nude study with fragments of winter landscape and scarcely recognisable details abstracted from banal surroundings. Just such a mixture was his series entitled Entwine, shown in 2011 in the off programme of the Photomonth in Kraków, about which the artist said:
“The series consists of photographs taken with traditional methods (negatives and slides) and digital photographs shot with a mobile phone and then digitally processed. The installation’s framework is two female nude study photographs and a falling matchstick pertaining to the time scale (thirty milliseconds). It’s in such time scales that the human brain works, sampling and processing information about the surrounding reality. The second clue to reading the series is the emotional perception of time (the duration of phenomena ‘in the head’, different from the duration of phenomena measured by the clock). The manner in which a photograph comes about is spontaneous and contains a spectrum of the forms surrounding me or documents the processes by which the objects on which I’m working come about. The title ‘entwine’ refers to the network of connections that my brain sets up when constructing the composition and the viewer’s brain follows when reproducing the sense of the work. The photographs constitute the eye of that network.”
Embeded gallery style
display gallery as slider
The photographs of Mateusz Sadowski, a graduate of the Department of Photography and Intermedia at the University of Arts in Poznań, have been presented at exhibitions both in Poland and abroad (among others The Summer of Youth, International Biennale for Young Art in Moscow, 2009; Videonale in Bonn, 2009; Zachęta - National Gallery of Art, 2010). In 2010 Sadowski received first prize in two competitions: Henkel Art Award Polska and Samsung Art Master 7, and in 2011 was nominated for the Deutsche Bank prize and once again for the Samsung Art Master prize. He currently lectures at the Department of Photography of his alma mater.
Selected solo exhibitions:
2014
- The Resonance Stereo Gallery, Warsaw
- Unplanned Images, BWA Zielona Góra
2013
- Turn of Events, BWA Katowice
2012
- Leak, Exile, Berlin
- I've Seen Too Much, SVIT, Prague, Czech Republic
2011
- There Is No Such Thing, Stereo Gallery, Poznań
- Entwine, Kraków Photomonth, Show Off
2009
- Fire, Stereo Gallery, Poznań
Selected group exhibitions:
2014
- As You Can See: Polish Art Today, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw
2013
- Things in Common, Art Stations Foundation, Poznań
- Photography, Reconstructed, Prague Photo Biennale 3
2012
- On Demand, tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam
- Arbeitdisziplin, Arsenał City Gallery, Poznań
- Will Be Fine, Galeria Stereo, Poznań
2011
- A Clock That Runs On Mud, Stereo Gallery, Poznań (+ virtual show at NERO Magazine, IT)
- MIR, Arsenał Gallery, Białystok
- Transylvania 2, Galeria Miejska Arsenał, Poznań
2010
- Samsung Art Master, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
- Transylvania , BWA, Zielona Góra
- Transit, Moscow International Biennale for Young Art
- The Summer of Youth, Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw
- Y Line, Appendix 2 Gallery, Warsaw
2009
- WRO Biennale: Expanded City, Wrocław
- Videonale 12, Kunstmuseum, Bonn
2008
- Samsung Art Master, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
The original text was published in The Decisive Moment. New Phenomena in Polish Photography Since 2000, Karakter, 2012
Author: Adam Mazur, October 2012, Update: Anna Micińska, March 2014