Konrad Smoleński

[PL]

Uncompromising Polish artist Konrad Smoleński works among the fields of photography, video art, installation, performance, and happening. His works often include spectacular pyrotechnic effects — in contrast with the usually minimal punk aesthetic — and are typified by a fine, chiselled precision that lend a purified, ascetic character.

Smoleński studied photography at the Intermedia Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań in 2002, and served as an assistant lecturer in the Pracownia Audiosfery and a lecturer in video arts following graduation. His practice brims with surprising objects, such as bombs made out of gymnastic balls, or musical instruments constructed from military missiles. Such objects are marked with his intervention (being shot through or burned, for example) and enter into dialogue with the concept of the ready-mades. A sense of anxiety can be found under the aesthetic layer of Smoleński's works, evoking the most fundamental questions about fear, death, and the ultimate. He is a founding member of Panerstwo, a group created by graduates of the Poznań Academy, and an animator of Pink Punk, a digital label and Polish alternative music collective. Smoleński has also experimented with music production in "Sound Bombing" guerrilla concerts staged by his BNNT group.

He has exhibited widely throughout Poland and Europe. Notably, his installation "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More," a sculptural instrument that reproduced, at regular intervals, a composition written for bronze bells, wide range loudspeakers, and other resonating objects, was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2013.

CTM 2015 Exhibition Opening

Kunstraum, Fri 23.01.2015, 19:00

Works by Anita Ackermann, Anke Eckardt, Claire Tolan, Derek Holzer, Emptyset, Graw Böckler, Konrad Smoleński, Matthijs Munnik, Mario de Vega, Nik Nowak, Zimoun, Zorka Wollny