Piotr Kotlicki (CV)

Born 1972 in Poland. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland in 2000, diploma with Prof. Ryszard Hunger. Currently works at the National Film School in Łódź at The Film and Television Directing Department.His work is multimedia-oriented with an emphasis on painting and video. They have been displayed at: Ningbo Museum of Art (China), the National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Audio-visual & new media arts festival Madatac in Madrid (Spain), the MS Dockville Festival in Hamburg (Germany), the International Video Festival in Novi Sad (Serbia), the Sandhofer Gallery, Salzburg (Austria), the Nachtspeicher23, Hamburg (Germany), the Simultan Festival, Timisoara (Romania), the National Audio-Visual Institute Warsaw (Poland), Assembly Gallery, Poznan (Poland), NordArt, Büdelsdorf(Germany), Drei Ringe, Leipzig (Germany), Strzelski Gallery, Stuttgart (Germany). Awards: 2016 Grand prix Freedom of Form, The Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, Gdańsk, Poland; 2017 IV Piotrkow Biennal of Art, ODA, Piotrkow Tryb, Poland; 2014 Shortlisted for „100 painters of tomorow”, Beers Contemporary and Thames & Hudson, UK.

Artist Statement

I paint from noon till evening using oil and traditional media. My characters seem to be trapped in a bad dream while my personal attitude to my images is that they represent the real. I guess they are the result of my brain absorbing NEWS or some other memories mixed with imagination. Making art for me means a constant struggle with adversities. Discipline - nonchalance. Imagination - observation. Dark - bright. Good - bad. Top - bottom. He looks straight – turns his head away. Probably the biggest struggle when making art is between the logical and the irrational. A great deal of things in painting is conscious, however, if the mind is suspended for a moment, the instinct is immediately squeezed onto the canvas. It takes over the idea, takes on any shape, even one of a crazy monster. Excluding it from the image at a hint from the reason is like stripping the image of its the greatest power. Its weight can infect the viewer. It is a kind of communication, empathy with the author of the picture. A dialogue, which, instead of description, discovers the world itself. Standing in front of such a painted image you can hear the call. Get a few seconds or minutes to open up.