Michał Fryc

Graduate of the Strzemiński ASP in Łódź, Faculty of Visual Arts (2012). Deals in broadly understood painting, curatorial work and social-political activity. Member of the Active Culture Association and Young Socialists. Co-founder of the Łódź branch of PPS. Lives and works in Łódź.

Michał Fryc: Painting and the socialist strategy

Contrary to the dominating, or at least most spectacular, current trend towards political commitment in art, Michał Fryc does not see artistic activity – or rather the institution of art itself – as an arena of political struggle. It may therefore be said that he returns to the division of the spheres of politics and aesthetics. In a way, painting becomes the place for exploring and constructing one’s own, perhaps also collective political awareness. It is where the reactivation of the Polish socialist movement is taking place, appropriated and manipulated in the era of the People’s Republic. At the same time, in the attempts resembling the way art should be used proposed by Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnower, painting conforms to the ideas formulated in politics. In Fryc’s case, this is done in a twofold manner. Firstly, in his treatment, processing or development of a political sign or symbol which may be used in political activities. And secondly, in the transformation of painting into a tool of granting symbolic value, creating political icons in order to regain and revalue the tradition of the Polish socialist movement. Fryc uses photographic images in creating pictures, in which historic events undergo a certain monumentalisation. In his traditional use of painting, what is striking and surprising is the renewal of its transfigurative power. Perhaps the “Radio a. r.” installation, no matter how mocking in its expression, could serve as a motto here – after all, it shows the power of transmission that may be aired on the waves of painting.       

Jarosław Lubiak