Łukasz Stokłosa
Born in 1986 in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. Lives and works in Cracow. Deals in painting, creating objects and photography.
Within the framework of the exhibition “A Painting Store” at the Zderzak Gallery in Cracow, which was very well-received and came first in the Cracow Radio artistic-event ranking, Łukasz Stokłosa presented a range of pictures showing interiors of old residences. The interiors are deserted, the walls full of pictures whose visual content remains an inscrutable mystery – uniform, fading, dark surfaces. However, Stokłosa is not interested in a scrupulous cataloguing of those interiors. His intention is not to evoke what a tourist feels visiting the Zamoyski residence in Kozłówka or the splendidly prepared exhibition in the Herbst Palace of Łódź’s Księży Młyn. He is more into – and here comes my interpretation – bringing back the former glamour, resurrecting the long-gone atmosphere of life of the European aristocracy (and not just that, what we have here too is the modern-day villa of industrial barons – the Tugendhats of Brno). We may say that the artist is interested in the ambience as a kind of specific, painting space built by the architecture of interiors and objects that both fill and create the spaces: chandeliers, railings, tables, chairs, sofas, desks, but also the characteristic ropes separating the visitors from exposition space in historic residences-museums. It is at the same time an intentionally unfinished space, as if blurred in the watercolour blots of paint. This incompleteness effect, or a sketchy treatment of some fragments of the painting, is the key element – it delineates the painting boundary between the recalled, elusive atmosphere of the past, and the specificity happening outside its frames.
We may now refer to the title of the exhibition in an interesting way – “A Painting Store”, which Stokłosa has borrowed from the rococo picture-signboard that Antoine Watteau made for his friend, the art dealer Gersaint. It shows the interior of a painting store, open like a theatre stage. What is interesting here is the passage between the painting-crammed interior of the store resembling a spacious palace room and the harsh reality of the paved street not even separated from it with a wall. The passage is like the boundary of disillusionment, from the masquerade and convention to real life, which the paintings cross in wooden boxes padded with hay. I think the illusion game from Watteau’s painting is echoed in a gripping way in Stokłosa’s paintings exactly through the connection of existential glamour and the materiality of the dripping paint which departs the designated form.
Piotr Bernatowicz
Łukasz Stokłosa
Born in 1986 in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska.
In 2005-2010, he studied at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Prof. Jacek Waltoś’s studio. He deals in painting, creating objects and photography. He lives and works in Cracow.
Individual exhibitions:
- “A Painting Store”, Zderzak Gallery, Cracow, 2013
- “A Winter’s Tale”, Zderzak Gallery, Cracow, 2011
Collective exhibitions:
- “Transgression II”, Artistic Action Centre, Piotrków Trybunalski, 2012
- “Recyclists”, AS Gallery, Cracow, 2012
- “Wait! New Acquisitions for the Zderzak Collection”, Zderzak Gallery, Cracow, 2012
- “Ice Queen”, Zderzak Gallery, Cracow, 2011
- “Renovation, Flat Painted”, action/exhibition in a private flat, Cracow, 2011
- “On Strange Feelings”, Zderzak Gallery, Cracow, 2011
- “TAKE (ART) AWAY”, Paulina Olszewska and Ewa Surowiec’s curatorial project “Endosymbiotic”, Zero Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 2010
- “Pink Cube”, Olympia Gallery, Cracow, 2010
- “You Don’t Get What You See”, Paulina Olszewska and Ewa Surowiec’s curatorial project “Endosymbiotic”, Zero Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 2010
- “Ars Homo Erotica”, National Museum in Warsaw, 2010
- “A Painting Salon”, project in a private flat, Cracow, 2010
- “Halfway Point”, Open Studio Gallery, Cracow, 2008
- “Firing Ground”, action/exhibition of Strupek Group, Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, 2008
- “In View of Wyspiański”, Sapphire Studio Gallery, Cracow, 2007
Publications:
- Paintings in the album “Art Pride”, Paweł Leszkowicz, Abiekt.pl, Warsaw, 2010
Competitions and awards:
- Faculty Award in painting, drawing and artistic textile, Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, 2009
- “In View of Wyspiański”, Third Prize, competition organized by Cracow’s Academy of Fine Arts, 2007
