The Foto-Medium-Art Gallery is proud to invite to the opening of Rafał Piekarz’s solo exhibition entitled Broadcasting Networks. The opening will take place on 30th July at 7 p.m. in the Kraków gallery.

Rafał Piekarz’s artistic project is a multi-dimensional analysis of the medium and notions such as abstraction, time and message. A television test card was the inspiration for such analysis. The artist chose the classic Philips image labelled PM5544 (classic test card broadcast by Polish public television). He began his actions related to this topic as early as December 2008 and continued almost until the day of the exhibition. The action lasted 20 months, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. During that time the artist, virtually excluded from any other artistic activity, produced monumental needle work consisting of 48 modules with joint area of approximately 12 sq.m. He transferred the test card image onto a canvas, using the simple cross stitch technique. One cotton thread cross in Piekarz’s concept corresponds with one pixel in the image interpreted on a computer screen.

This outlined process of creation refers to multiple narratives of contemporary culture which in the process of tedious work, similar to that of artisan’s, have become less hierarchical. At first it seems appropriate to emphasise the need to combine two dissimilar codes – one resulting from the iconosphere of mass media, manifested by the choice of inspiration, and the other of traditional handicraft technique close to the folk ethos. The ambiguous title of the exhibition and the project “Broadcasting Networks” can also be interpreted as a conjunction of the two spheres. In a way the artist also plays with the determinism connecting sex of the artist/artisan to the activity attributed to him. It is worth making a similar distinction regarding inspirations derived from Malevich’s theory of abstract art. A test card, similarly to Black Square can be interpreted as an absence. Any reflections appearing in the course of actions, immanently associated with the project, are defined by the passing of time. Boredom, repeated action requiring precision, similarly to a mantra, puts the artist in a permanent nearly hypnotic state. It is a stimulus for insight, reminiscence or interrupted judgment of reality.

Rafał Piekarz – (b. 1978) Multimedia artist. Since 2006 he has worked on the cycle 0,11, referring to the works displayed during the Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting in Petrograd in 1915. He passionately combines his art with parapsychological motifs (Recognition F20.0) photographs, Beuyspsychotherapie objects, Positioning installation. He studied Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, photography at the Film School in Łódź, and graphic arts and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He was granted the Jan Matejko artistic scholarship (2009) and awarded Gold Medal of the Polish association of Fédération Internationale de l‘Art Photographique (2007).

The Rafał Piekarz exhibition is open for viewing by the general public till 4th September 2010

Press materials can be downloaded at:
http://foto-medium-art.com/press/rafal-piekarz-broadcasting-networks/download/

The exhibition realized with the support of ARIADNA S.A. Fabryka Nici