Igła (Needle)
An oversized marble needle with a single pearl, suspended in a precarious state of equilibrium between stability and collapse. An object combining both phallic and vaginal elements simultaneously. The needle — a tool associated with women’s work, capable of drawing blood yet unsuited for use as a weapon — is, through enlargement, transformed into a […]
Panna młoda (Bride)
Formally, the work is built upon the contrast between a large block of white marble inlaid with natural pearls and the delicate structure of a wedding dress. The sculpture is a kind of totemic fetish, shamelessly protruding from a coquettishly draped garment. The gesture of the artist dressing the sculpture is of particular significance here, […]
Górnik (Miner)
The work brings together multiple artistic traditions: from monumental Socialist Realist sculpture with its homoerotic predilection for powerful figures of labour vanguards, through the Surrealist objects of Władysław Hasior and elements of Kantor’s imaginarium, to the Italian movement of arte povera. The enormous striding figure is constructed from mining tools — pickaxes, ladders, chains — […]
Wyżymanie (Wringing)
The spindle-shaped, monumental form constructed from characteristic pasiaki — folk textiles sold during the People’s Republic of Poland era through the Central Bureau of Folk and Artistic Industry, “Cepelia” — recalls an enormous dress, majestically spinning in an unsettling, slowed movement. The artist references the Tower of Fire by Bauhaus-affiliated Johannes Itten, who, alongside his […]
Iglica (Spire)
The form of the sculpture — a kind of tripod — may evoke a pyre of wood stacked for lighting a fire. A pyre that offered protection against the cold, but also a place where women accused of witchcraft were put to death. The oversized bones lend the work a monumental character, referencing the figures […]
Kraków Culture | Mateusz Okoński. Osobliwy
The Curiosity
On the darkness-shrouded stage, one can hear the creaking of floorboards beneath footsteps. A sound akin to that produced by old parquet floors in the stifling Kraków apartments of nineteenth-century tenement houses. Slowly warming spotlights gradually draw forth from shadow a procession of figures. Bones and jewels. The viewers’ excitement resembles that which Howard Carter […]
English 
Polish