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Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art
ul. Jaskółcza 1
80-767 Gdańsk
Phone +48 58 305 40 50
Fax +48 58 305 26 80
office@laznia.pl
www.laznia.pl
ul. Jaskółcza 1
80-767 Gdańsk
Phone +48 58 305 40 50
Fax +48 58 305 26 80
office@laznia.pl
www.laznia.pl
Artists
Brzeski Olaf
Brzeski was born in 1975 in Wrocław where he lives and works now. He studied sculpture at the city's Academy of Fine Arts between 1995-2000. In 2009 he was nominated for the Views – Deutsche Bank Foundation Award.
He debuted with a winning sculpture in the competition for the Orange Alternative monument (Pomarańczowa Alternatywa was an underground protest movement, which in the 1980s acted against the communist authorities in Poland). The piece featured a stone dwarf sitting on a thumb-shaped plinth, a sculpture that referred to the use of dwarf imagery in some of the organization’s nonsensical happenings. The sculpture now stands in Świdnicka Street in Wrocław.
His first big solo exhibition, at the BWA Awangarda Gallery in Wrocław (2004) and called Only for Animals, was filled with references to figures from his childhood – the cartoon characters who were the source of his traumatic visions. One of them was Snoopy (2004), a humorous dog from the comic strip, who wore a sinister and subversive smile in the exhibition piece.
Olaf Brzeski’s practice is rooted in surrealist visions, which he puts into life via film, three-dimensional sculptures and installations. His comments about his own works do not so much mirror his personal interpretation, but narrate fictional stories, illustrated in the artworks or, in fact, made believable through the existence of the latter. This is the way in which Brzeski generates new worlds and their inhabitants.
BIP