Izabela Chamczyk

Born in 1980 in Częstochowa

Education:

2009 MA Diploma with honours, Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Painting Department

Promoters: prof. Przemysław Pintal and prof. Paweł Jarodzki
Title of Master’s Thesis: “TO PAINT” painting projections

2004-2009 Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Faculty of Painting and Sculpture, Painting Department
2007-2008 Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, exchange programme, prof. Dominik Lejman’s studio
2001-2005 Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Institute of Landscape Architecture

Painter-performer. Works in various media, incessantly re-defining their boundaries. Ideas for her actions always involve emotions. Creates processual art which is set in time and space, e.g. public space.

www.izabelachamczyk.pl

Exhibitions and individual activities:

2011
º  'TOUCH' exhibition of sound pictures, performance, Strefa A Gallery, Cracow, Poland
º  'BLUE BECOMES ME' exhibition, performance , Entropia Gallery, Wrocław, Poland
º  'Sense of Safety' performance, Szyperska Gallery, Poznań, Poland
2010
º ‘IT HAS ALREADY BEEN NAMED: painting exhibition’, BWA Zielona Góra, Poland
º ‘Love Me!’ painting exhibition accompanied by ART  ATTACK action, Arttrakt Gallery, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘A Stranger’ performance, Polish-German Weekend, House of Edith Stein, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Painting with Time’ exhibition, Agora Culture Centre, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘NAME IT AS YOU WANT. I’ve Always Wanted to Do It’ performance, Entropia Gallery, Wrocław, Poland
2009
º ‘TO PAINT’ diploma show in three places in Wrocław, night 10/11 July, performance with multimedia painting projections in city space; venues: ASP Wrocław, BWA Awangarda Gallery Wrocław, facade of the Municipal Culture Department building, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘LIFT’ project, change of the sound in Wrocław’s ASP lift, Poland
º Participation in ‘Alternative Programme’, TVP Kultura, ‘Delineated Painting’ action
2008
º ‘Cognition’ exhibition of paintings, photographs and video, Nowa Gallery, Poznań, Poland
º ‘Domestication’ action-installation, prof. Dominik Lejman’s studio, ASP Poznań, Poland
º ‘Useless Art’ action, Wrocław, Poland (http://www.zbednasztuka.prv.pl)
2007
º ‘Anti-Exhibition of Painting’, BWA Studio, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Tango’, performance, Rynek Post Office, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Who Watches My Painting’ exhibition and installation, KONT Gallery, Lublin, Poland
º ‘Outside’ multimedia show, windows of the ASP building in Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Net’ performance-installation, ‘Culture Garden’, Sosnowiec, Poland
2006
º ‘I Dream On’ painting and video exhibition, Skalna Gallery, Culture Centre in Strzelin, Poland
º ‘I Smoke Because I Don’t Understand’ action, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘…TO PAINT…’ installation-performance, Sputnik Gallery, Wrocław, Poland

Collective activities:

2010
º ‘Underwater Wrocław’ festival, intermedia stage, ‘ART WAVE(S)...BETWEEN SPACE AND TIME’ interactive installation entitled ‘po za itd.’
º ‘UPSIDE DOWN INSIDE OUT’, Rechtsanwaltskanzlei Streifler & Kollegen, Berlin, Germany
º ‘Y Line’ young artists’ exhibition, Appendix 2 Gallery, painting, documentation, performance, Warsaw, Poland
º ‘Bizarre Stories’, installation entitled ‘POSITIONS’, BWA Gallery, Lublin, Poland
º ‘Anarchy in Space’, ephemeral installation entitled ‘Bathroom’, U Gallery, Wrocław, Poland
2009
º Participation in the post-competition exhibition of the 19th Review of Young Painting PROMOTIONS 2009
º Participation in the post-competition exhibition of the 7th ‘Self-Portrait’ Competition in Stalowa Wola, Poland
º Participation in the post-competition exhibition of the 8th Competition ‘Hestia’s Art Journey’
º ‘Art After Hours’ exhibition, video installation on white rose petals entitled ‘Systems’, CSW Łaźnia, Gdańsk, Poland
º ‘Enter/Escape. How Painting Shapes New Spaces’ exhibition, INSPIRATIONS Festival  in Szczecin, processual picture with audience participation entitled ‘SURFACE’
http://inspiracje.art.pl/2009/projekty/projekt_kuratorski
2008
º ‘Art After Hours’, action, installation, video, Rondo Youth Promotion Gallery, Łódź, Poland
º Participation in the 3rd International Review of Experimental Cinema and Video Art in Rybnik, Poland
2007
º ‘Will It Survive…?’ video installation, Young Art In Extreme Conditions Review SURVIVAL5, SPA Centre, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Dialogue with Culture’, distinction, Painting Category, participation in the post-competition exhibition, ASP Assembly Hall, Wrocław, Poland
2006
º ‘Polish-Polish Phrasebook’, BCK Gallery, Brzeg Opolski, Poland
º ‘Mandala’ performance-installation, Young Art In Extreme Conditions Review SURVIVAL4, Main Railway Station in Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Just That Much’ installation, collective exhibition >FROM<>TO<, Geppert Guest Gallery, Wrocław, Poland
2005
º ‘500% of Art’, Miejsce dla Sztuki Gallery, ASP Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Suspension’ installation, Young Art In Extreme Conditions Review SURVIVAL3, Old Municipal Brewery, Wrocław, Poland
º ‘Think Animal’ exhibition, Eco-Art Association Basta, Old Municipal Brewery, Wrocław, Poland

Awards and distinctions:

2010
º ‘Young Poland’, Minister of Culture and National Heritage Grant
º Gazeta Wyborcza’s WARTO Award nomination
2009
º ‘Artluk Magazine’ grant for a young artist
º A painting from the ‘Wounded’ cycle qualified for the post-competition exhibition of the 19th Review of Young Painting PROMOTIONS 2009
º ‘Self-Portrait in Loneliness, or the Internet’ qualified for the post-competition exhibition of the 7th ‘Self-Portrait’ Competition in Stalowa Wola, Poland
º ‘Self-Portrait from an Advertisement, or Self-Destruction’ qualified for the final of the 8th Competition ‘Hestia’s Art Journey’, participation in the post-competition exhibition
2008
º Honorary mention in the contest organized by the website Wywrota, Other Forms Category, for processual painting ‘Self-Portrait Mould Salt’
º ‘Recycling’, film qualified for, and presented at the 3rd International Review of Experimental Cinema and Video Art in Rybnik, Poland (http://www.experimentart.rybnik.pl)
2007
º ‘Dialogue with Culture’ competition, distinction, Painting Category, participation in the post-competition exhibition, ASP Assembly Hall, Wrocław, Poland
º Poster competition, International Festival Offensiva 2008, distinction and participation in the post-competition exhibition, Warszawa Cinema, Wrocław, Poland
2006
º Fourth Place and Special Jury Award for the performance ‘Pudding’, ‘Wild Thing’ Competition, Sputnik Gallery, Wrocław, Poland

 

Yes, it is her. Izabela Chamczyk is the artist who imprisoned people in a gallery during her exhibition and made ransom demands, i.e. buying her works. If there are any mitigating circumstances, they must include the fact that artists debuting in this city are not properly promoted. In this sense, remembering her for just that incident would not be fair. Izabela Chamczyk is probably the most active young artist in the city, which may be easily proved by analyzing her artistic biography. For her, the picture is the starting point in exploring other media and means of expression. My first contact with Iza’s painting was in Sputnik, an art gallery which does not exist anymore. I saw her there, tied to ropes hanging from the ceiling and trying to reach with her brush a white-covered canvas. The sense of impossibility and frustration in coping with painting, just like struggling with her own body, became the founding myth in more actions to follow. In January 2007, when she had nowhere to paint, I let her stay and live at Studio BWA for a month. The gallery audience visited her there, watching her at work. Critics, teachers and journalists came to chat as well. Her exhibitions of paintings tend to be complex installations accompanied by actions, like the one at Entropia, when she covered the gallery floor and a vertical stretcher bar with flexible canvas, and then rolled naked underneath the material, right under the visitors’ feet. Finally, she entered the frames of her picture only to rip it open from inside. In Zielona Góra, she allowed the BWA audience to see her works on the condition that they entered a translucent, flexible sleeve which disgustingly stuck to the body, and filled the exhibition room with white smoke clouding her canvases. Iza Chamczyk’s painting gets confirmed by her own – more or less direct – presence. Her figure, that of a painter and a woman alike, becomes the key starting point for her sensual, girlish compositions.
Piotr Stasiowski

Performance-installation ‘DO NOT TOUCH!’, 2011


phot. Łukasz Bąk


"Art is a fragment of our reality and yet it tends to be treated as a cut-out, something separate and unattainable. Something that must not be touched. However, one may provoke a desire to touch. What I do is based on emotions and it touches in the non-physical sense. Touching is forbidden, but only corporeally. I hide behind the barrier of touch deprivation in order to be able to touch what is essential.

The performance lasts the whole time the exhibition is taking place. My body becomes a live object of art. An object that cannot be touched, only desired. Also, the picture is living its own life. How compatible with me?"

Iza Chamczyk