IT’S ALREADY BEEN BETTER
Opening Reception November 17th, 4pm-8pm
Tomasz Opania
ul. Na Ostatnim Groszu 56/8
54-207 Wroclaw
tel. +48 602 449 687,
e-mail; tomaszopania@gmail.com,
Born in 1970 in Gliwice in Upper Silesia.
Years 1989 - 94 studies at Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw – sculpture department. In 1993 he got the Ministry of Culture and Art scholarship; In 1994 he got a scholarship from the Swiss Confederacy Government in the program „For Young Artists”. From 1994 to 96 he studied at Ecole Superieure d’Art Visuel in Geneva. In 1996 hired at Academy of Art. and Design in Wroclaw. Since 2011 he has taught Art in the Public Space in the Department of Art’s Mediation. Since 2012 the head of the Department of Art’s Mediation. Since 2018 professor at the Academy has conducted a diploma studio. Since 2020 head of the post-diploma faculty Mediation and Art Market department. Since 2021 vice president of the Artistic Discipline Council at the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław
He deals with sculpture, installation, performance, activities in public spaces, and engaged design. He builds objects and inventions using various techniques or cooperating with professionals and craftsmen, often only for a single project or activity. He uses materials and techniques that subordinate the idea. His "tools of art" are often the machines or devices used for active reception. He makes interactive works in order to throw some responsibility on the recipient and shift the concept of art towards the spectator. These are participatory sculptures that engage the viewer and/or force him to adopt a predicted attitude. It also implements the attributes that it uses in live performances. He treats his works as a commentary on current events and the reality surrounding him. He is interested in politics and society. The spatial dimension and character of his works depend in large part on the place where they are realized, as well as on the place where he is mentally located himself. Is committed to the principle of continual uncertainty regarding the constant elements of our everyday surroundings. The nature of his works follows the wish to constantly carry out new trials and to enter new, unknown paths. He conducts workshops for young people, adults, and excluded people: with mental disorders, disabilities, and/or permanent unemployed.
Quotes from the text by Professor Anna Markowska from a book about Tomasz Opania TOMASZ OPANIA. DESIGN SHOWROOME
SIGN
Opania, who always preferred to go his own way without imposing anything on anybody,
eventually combined the tradition of critical art with irony and playfulness that serious critical artists rarely adopted. He enriched the national tradition with cheerful friskiness, a trait that makes us all like the Lower Silesian capital so much
..most of the presented works are the artist’s prototypes of exercise equipment. Using the devices changes art into a performance carried out by the audience. Opania’s analytical mind created works intended to perfect the body, optimise family relationships and improve international relations.
Opania turns out to be also a Provoker and Tester, and within the field of his art the reconstruction of the social contract is happening on the basis of multiple repetitions of exercises with the modelling equipment and by perceiving the routine as a formative experience.
We are supposed to look at automatic and obvious aspects of our lives, those that are so ordinary that they become unnoticeable. This is how we should recognise art in the everyday.
Opania enquires about living tradition and its power to influence individuals, organize the lives of collectives, and intertwine spiritual needs with concrete rituals. He does so by using surprising tools and equipment, whose function could equally likely be to manipulate or instill an ideology in us, or – by revealing the mechanisms beyond habit formation – to raise our awareness of the methods used to discipline and drill us into obedience as well as of the contents of this invisible training. The artist uses his tools to ask fundamental questions about NATION, RELIGION, FAMILY, HOME, BODY, EARNING A LIVING, and all these notions are filtered through art.
The two-month individual exhibition entitled: IT'S ALREADY BEEN BETTER at Midway Gallery, organized at the invitation of curator Milan Kohout, aims to present the artist's achievements to date on a series of large-format prints and a series of video projections documenting selected activities, completed objects and interventions in public space and objects brought from Poland. It will also be an opportunity to carry out in situ installations and performances. During his 3-week stay in Boston, the artist will work on-site, implementing objects and interventions in situ and interacting with the local community. Video recordings of actions in the city's public space and the resulting artifacts will build an additional and current layer of the exhibition.
The stay in Boston will therefore be a process and will be focused on working with the context - historical, social, economic, and geopolitical. It is an opportunity to experiment in completely new conditions, in an unknown environment with a completely different recipient. This will be Opania's first meeting with an American art user, whose sense of civil liberties and freedom of artistic expression is a basic and indisputable condition for the functioning of a democratic society. Opania, as an artist, but also as a teacher running an art studio in a public space, considers the context of freedom of artistic expression to be crucial and intends to emphasize it strongly during her stay in the USA. Especially since in Poland, his rights to free artistic expression were repeatedly restricted, his artistic works were censored, and he was threatened with the legal consequences of his works and speeches. His works are cited as an expression of censorship in art in the book "Artistic Freedom - A Practical Guide" published by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and in the report Cultural Control: Censorship and Suppression of the Arts in Poland created by the Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI) of New York. This process will be facilitated by the profile of Midway Gallery as well as the attitude of curator Milan Kohout, who runs the ArtSpeech - Freedom of Speech & Expression project.
Curated by Milan Kohout.
Photos taken by Haley Abram.