Paweł Kowalewski

Paweł Kowalewski, "Mon Cheri Bolscheviq", 1984, oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm, in the collection of the Starak Family Foundation

Kowalewski's work comes from the post conceptual tradition, where the idea of the artist mixes with his work using the form of written commentaries and the poetic often complex titles of the works which are placed on sashes made of material. Together with the other members of Gruppa, he organised radical happenings with joint painting and recitals, based on poetic absurdity, in, amongst other places the cult studio “Dziekanka” at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (e.g. recital in 1987,” A Cold Deer in Jam” about Lenin in Poronin. Kowalewski's art can be described as being expressionist, autobiographical, inspired by personal experience and literary context. As an artist he created his own communicative language. More important than form or medium for him was the message.

In Poland during the 1980s there was a characteristic meeting of social and artistic paths, which were taken by artists who were researching that reality while examining moral and ideological values. The work of Kowalewski and Gruppa was created in parallel with and perhaps even earlier than some of the trends which were then happening in German art, such as Neue Wilde. Rebellion and a search for identity determined the approach of artists then in both countries.

From the first years of his artistic career Paweł Kowalewski developed the concept of “personal art, that is private”. Artistic inspiration therefore was closely connected to the artist's own life, while also at the same time it also referred to problems which were of a more universal nature. This basic oscillation between the individual experience and universality has accompanied Kowalewski's work up till today and reflects a consistent theme.

Around 1986 the first of Kowalewski's sculptures came into being. Small objects, which the artist closed in glass cases, as if they were relicts from the past. “Prawe ucho sługi najwyższego Kapłana/The Right Ear Serves the Highiest Priest” and “Kamień, który stał się chlebem/The Stone which Became Bread” were critical commentaries on the hostile everyday aesthetic of the time. In a similarly brutal, expressive and nonchalant tone Kowalewski created his paintings which were even the subject of censorship interventions from the Catholic Church. The artist's work in the 1980s was treated by the authorities of what was then a totalitarian state as art which must stay outside official circulation. The series “Psalmy/Psalms” which was inspired by the Psalm of David as translated by Czesław Miłosz, was subjectively accused of blasphemy. Each of these works by Kowalewski referred to specific quotations from this book of psalms and reflected the dilemmas of a young artist: Should I leave or stay in my country? What is right? Is there justice...?

The crowning moment of this period was the artist's participation in Documenta 8. in Kassel[8] in 1987, where works by amongst others Barbara Kruger and Joseph Beuys were exhibited. Kowalewski together with Gruppa organised a joint painting happening on a large size canvas called, “Kuda Gierman”.

After many exhibitions both nationally and abroad some of Kowalewski's works became in later times icons of 1980s art, e.g. “Mon Cheri Bolsheviq” (a painting exhibited in amongst other places the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow), the sculpture “Tragiczna nieprzezroczystość konieczności/A Tragic Opaque Necessity” (a hermetically sealed aquarium with a piece of beef kidney submerged in water) or “Do widzenia moi kochani/Goodbye, My Beloved Ones” (a painting which is part of the private collection[9] of the well-regarded art critic Anda Rottenberg).

Paweł Kowalewski, "Europeans Only", from the cycle Forbidden, 2012, lightbox, 150 × 200 × 12 cm, exhibition in NS-Dokumentationszentrum in Munich, Germany[10]

A key transformative moment in Kowalewski's work came in 1989, when the artist together with other members of Gruppa initiated a joint painting gathering in front of the capital city's Solidarity polling station. This gathering called "Głos przyrody na Solidarność" as known as "Voice of Nature on Solidarity” was a symbolic closing moment of the group's career. The artists had started in the 1980s as novices, and had finished the decade as classics. Thanks to their many artistic successes, in 1992 in the Zachęta National Art Gallery there was a large retrospective exhibition, which showed a significant cross-section of Gruppa's work. The country's systemic transformation and also the end of the Gruppa's existence, affected Kowalewski's work by changing its means of communication. At the beginning of the 90s he started to create analytical and structural canvasses. In his paintings from this period the artist's work portrayed a clash of nineteenth century wall paper patterns with black and white stripes – a sarcastic vision of the future. After exhibiting his latest series called „Fin de siècle”[11] in the Warsaw gallery Appendix in 1992, Paweł Kowalewski was taken on by the French gallery of Isy Brachot,[12] as the only Pole apart from Roman Opałka. His work was then shown in the Brachot gallery in Brussels, together with a retrospective of one of Belgium's most famous artists, the surrealist Paul Delvaux. Kowalewski concluded his artistic work in the medium of painting with the „Fin de siècle”[13] series. From this moment he concentrated on inter-disciplinary and performance art. During this period the artist created his most characteristically socially engaged work as an artist. The sign “Europeans Only”,[14] seen in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg in 2010 initiated the series “Forbidden/NIE WOLNO”[15] which took the form of a documentation of all the bans and orders which the artist registered during his travels all over the world. Reproductions of the “NIE WOLNO”[16] series in the form of postcards appeared during Kowalewski's artistic performances during the Biennale in Venice in 2011. The artist visited souvenir stands and added his cards with the regulatory orders of both democratic and totalitarian systems to the standard tourist ones which were normally displayed. “NIE WOLNO”[17] also functioned as a series of light boxes which accompanied the installation “Totalitarianism Simulator”[18] in Propaganda Gallery in 2012. In this technical machine built by the artist, the world of oppression and drastic images of the crimes committed during totalitarian times, were presented next to scenes from a normal everyday life (e.g. barman competition in Italy, a family out for a walk in Milan, a classical music concert). The viewer on entering the simulator became a participant in the tragic events, because his photo which was registered on entry to the cabin, was randomly placed on the projected filmed frames of horror. The materials used to produce the “Totalitarianism Simulator”,[19] the smell of rubber, smelly tar, the darkness and isolation, brought the viewer closer to a situation associated with oppression, so that each individual could become aware of his reactions and behaviour during the simulation of a moment of danger.

The 2000s for Kowalewski brought a turn towards the ethos of memory or the personal process of forgetting and erasing. In 2015 in Tel Aviv the artist presented the series "Strength and Beauty" in which he concentrated on issues connected to subjective memory in the context of group experience.

Paweł Kowalewski, "Trust the Lord and Do Good, so Shalt Thou Dwell in the Land Feed on His Faithfulness", from the cycle Psalms, 1984, tempera on paper, 243 x 195 cm

The concept was inspired by a very personal history of the artist and became a pretext to tell the stories of an extraordinary generation of women. A series of large format portraits which disappeared, presented so called “Polish Mothers” who had been affected by the trauma of war and totalitarianism. Thanks to a special printing technique, the women's portraits after some time were barely visible, just as their images fade in our memories. Kowalewski while working on the series "Strength and Beauty" conduced an artistic dialogue with the well-known Israeli artist Dan Reisinger. In 2017 Paweł Kowalewski had his own solo exhibition in the prestigious Jerke Museum, the first foreign institution in Germany which is mainly dedicated to Polish avant-garde art. The “Zeitgeist”[20] project was made up of sculptures and the best-known paintings from the 1980s, amongst others “Ja zastrzelony przez Indian/I, Shot Dead by the Indians”.[21] As a part of the exhibition, at the same time in St. Peter's Church in Recklinghausen,[22] Kowalewski's large format works were exhibited, so the Psalms of David, which even today have retained their universal character, as they deal with issues related to how to shape individual autonomy when faced with higher powers. He also stars in the movie "Power of Art" realized by the Jerke Museum and the Film School in Łódź.

Paweł Kowalewski's works are to be found in the biggest Polish museums, but also in the Paris Centre Pompidou, as well as many Polish and foreign private collections. His work has been bought for the National Museum of Warsaw collection, the National Museum of Kraków,[23] Zachęta – National Art Gallery,[24] Museum Jerke, the Regional Museum in Bydgoszcz, the Museum of Upper Silesia in Bytom, the collection of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and also the ING Polish Art Foundation,[25] the Benetton Foundation,[26] the Starak Family Foundation[27] and the Egit Foundation. They are also to be found in the private collections of Andrzej Bonarski, Donald Pirie, Cartier, Jan Zylber and the Paszkowski Estate Norblin.

Paweł Kowalewski's work has also been exhibited in amongst other places the Jerke Museum in Germany, Artist's House in Tel Aviv, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Isy Brachot gallery in Brussels, in Dorotheum in Vienna, Sotheby's in London, NS-Dokumentationszentrum in Munich,[28] Zachęta - National Art Gallery in Warsaw, the Museum of the History of Photography in Kraków, MOCAK, the Warsaw Gallery Propaganda (formerly Appendix) as well as at art fairs in Vienna,[29] Brussels and Stockholm.

The artist has also taken part in important retrospective exhibitions summarising the time of the Polish transformation and political relations in Poland up to and after 1989, e.g. “Banana Revolution”, “Moscow – Warsaw”, “Irreligion"[30] and “The Fatherland in Art”.

Live art auction of Paweł Kowalewski's NFT "Why is There Something Rather than Nothing?" at the DESA Unicum auction house in Warsaw, on 02/12/2021.

The painting by Paweł Kowalewski “Why is There Something Rather than Nothing?” from 1986,[31] it was the first NFT object to be sold at a Polish live art auction. The pioneering event for the domestic art market, took place on December 2, 2021 at DESA Unicum.[32] The artist's work that has been tragically damaged, now passes to eternity in a digital form.[33]

In 1991 he set up his own advertising agency “Communication Unlimited”.