Jakub Julian ZIÓŁKOWSKI (b. 1980), Untitled, 2007

Untitled, 2007
gouache; cardboard; 35 x 50 cm;
Signed and dated on back: Jakub Julian Ziółkowski / J 2007 (in pencil), and JJZ *07* (stamp).
The artist graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, where he received his diploma from Prof. Leszek Misiak in 2005. He is associated with the Warsaw-based Foksal Gallery Foundation and Hauser & Wirth.
Selected solo exhibitions: 2010 Timothy Galoty & The Dead Brains, Hauser & Wirth, New York; Do It Yourself, BWA Design Gallery, Wroclaw; 2009 Centre d'Art Contemporain Geneve; 2008 Hauser & Wirth, Zurich; 2007 Demi Volte, F.A.I.T., Krakow; 2006 Hauser & Wirth, London; 2005 stuffed knee limp color, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw; 2004 Galeria Pod Schodami, Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow.
Selected group exhibitions: 2010 10,000 Lives, 8th Gwangju Biennale 2010, Kwangdzu; Curse of Imagination, Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow; 14-oji Vilniaus tapybos trienale: Klaidingas atpažinimas, Šiuolaikinio meno centras, Vilnius; The Library of Babel, 176 Zabludowicz Collection, London; 2009 Blue Almost White, LETO Gallery, ING Polish Art Foundation, Warsaw; Head-Wig, Camden Arts Centre, London; Heaven, 2nd Athens Biennale, Athens; Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York; 2008 I Won't Grow Up, Cheim & Read, New York; Psych: Ned Vena, Jonas Wood, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, Galerie Denis Kimmerich, Du¨sseldorf; 2007 Old School, Hauser & Wirth, Colnaghi, London; Zwirner & Wirth, New York; 2006 Polish Painting of the 21st Century, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Art in the Service of the Leftists, Kronika, Bytom; 2005 6. National Exhibition of Painting of the Young, 7th Eugeniusz Geppert Competition, BWA Awangarda Gallery, Wroclaw; 2004 Domowa atmosfera, Olimpia House, Krakow.

Ziolkowski is not interested in the reality he finds, nor in the world processed in the media. He understands art as an autonomous sphere saturated with its own codes and motifs, rich in ready-to-use styles. The autonomous space of art is combined in his works with imagination and subconsciousness. The artist looks for inspiration not outside, but in his own head. Ziolkowski started with drawing, and his favorite format was an A4 sheet of paper. He received several thousand pieces of such paper as a gift even before his studies. The paper was old, yellowed, fleshy. For many years the artist drew on it with pencil and ink, then he started using oil paints and canvases. By force of habit, he tried to make the color of the ground similar to that of the old paper, he made them in shades of cream, and used overpaintings to age the painting. In Ziolkowski's works one can find echoes of surrealism, expressionism, abstraction, constructivism, cubism, op-art, oriental art, as well as comic book conventions.
This elaborate eclecticism is firmly bound together by the imagination of the artist, for whom the most important reference is his own paintings. Ziolkowski seems to be in constant dialogue with his own painting. In it, he builds a special microcosm that is far removed from the external, real world. Rather, the visions he creates refer viewers to the realms of dreams, dreams, desires, subconscious fears, anxieties.
(source: culture.pl)

"To say of these canvases that they attract and captivate is too little. The starting point is a veritable explosion of holistic vision, a tsunami of colors and dazzling configurations. Sprinkled as if from a horn of plenty, the symbols offer the bewildered eye an iconographic universe far from the usual. This vividness seems to have much in common with the flare-up of a star called a supernova in astrophysics, whose brilliance lasts only a moment. It is very difficult to move afterwards to a perceptual analysis of the image, so as to maintain continuity with the initial vision."
(Hanna Wroblewska, Revolt of Images: On the Painting of Jakub Julian Ziolkowski)

"His painting tells many stories. Beginning with explaining its origins, through war, religion, sex, psyche to human madness. Ending often with the human body - whole or quartered, profaned or glorified in ways that can be fearful or shocking."
(Robert Smith, The New York Times)