Act Painting

Mariusz Stanowski – Polish painter, designer, theoretician of art. Born in Warsaw in 1951. Graduated from Fine Arts Academy (the Faculty of Industrial Design) in 1979, where he worked for a few years as a designer and academic teacher. Since 1984 he has been painting and working on art theory. That year witnessed the publication of his first theoretical work on the perception of visual structures called Abstract Structures (ASP, Warszawa 1984). In the same year he had his first painting exhibition opened in Modern Art Museum in Helsinborg. The paintings shown were of neo-cubist character. It was in 1986 when consciousness started playing a significant role in his painting and concepts become his material, together with traditional painting resources. It was also an attempt to combine painting with conceptualism. Then he establishes ties with Polish conceptualists, Jan Świdziński among others. His art programme is expressed in the exhibitions, both in painting and text. In the catalogue for the Stodoła Gallery exhibition (Warszawa 1986), he publishes theoretical texts: Pure painting and The Crisis of Art as Art (Stanowski 1986) and in a catalogue of 1989 exhibition (Galeria Działań) a text of Stefan Morawski The test of strength. In 1991-1992 he co-operated with Obieg, a magazine published by the Centre of Modern Art in Warsaw (articles: A Lecture Note, What is Definition for, A letter to Bogusław Schaeffer). Following the programme period, the major content of Stanowski painting becomes the creation itself (Creativity and creative expression, Exhibition catalogue, Bałucka Gallery, Łódź, 1997). Between 1993 and 1996 he lives in New York, where he also exhibits his works: Pass Gallery, Four Walls Gallery, Visual Art Museum (School of Visual Arts) and Radford University (Radford, USA). In 2003, a catalogue of his works covering the period of 1980-2003 was published (ZS, Wyd. Grzegorczyk, Warszawa 2003) In 2005, the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology of Warsaw University published his book Abstract Structures .