Painters, 2007 DVD 20" ( video still )

Test it, 2006, photograph

Berufung,2006,  acryl on canvas, 120x170 cm

KAROL RADZISZEWSKI   ■ bio
Balance Exercises

Multidimensional – that’s the word, which describes best Radziszewski’s art. In the oeuvre of the 27 year old artist, we can find conventional canvas painting, graffiti and monumental murals, videos, public space projects, social actions and complicated projects built with the use of various media. Radziszewski strives to be a total artist by adopting all available spaces and means of communication. In his works he creates the reality around him, including his own mythology.

In the exhibited works we can see the struggle between hiding and revealing of what is private, what is shared with the public and that which remains unsaid. The video pieces pull us into the artist’s fantasy world; we see with his eyes. In “Man – object of desire”, Radziszewski’s candid camera looks at a teenage boy sitting on a window sill. Watching him throw out his naked chest in the window frame, Radziszewski depicts the boy as a curiosity, a representative of the so-called “sweatsuit” subculture whilst at the same time he points to the beauty of the male body and creates connotations to a classical male nude. The film’s quasi-amateur, grainy, imperfect aesthetic is confronted with erotic sublimation.

The other video piece, “Painters”, shows a group of workers renovating a building’s facade. Here, the voyeur finds a perverse meaning of various banal situations and images – climbing scaffolding, smoking cigarettes and mutual taunts. By showing these situations in great detail and removing their colloquial reality, the artist gives them a new meaning.

The male body is also a leitmotif in Radziszewski’s photographs. By documenting himself, his nearest surroundings, friends as well as accidentally met people, he creates sets of images that make up his private mythology. Thus, his photographs become a subjective chronicle of events.

Radziszewski’s video pieces and photographs are accompanied by his newest paintings. In their case, inspiration came from a pre-war book with examples of exercises and fitness tests designed for young men. Balance exercises, taken out of the context, are absurd, but at the same time – disturbing.