Waldemar Petryk

Waldemar Petryk creates performances, installations and objects. His art is full of humor and poetry colored by thoughtful intellectual provocation. His artistic orientation was influenced by the late 1970s' conflict between a traditional, visual understanding of art and conceptualism, which spoke against artistic objects and constructed art through concepts. Petryk supported none of these approaches. He chose the combining strategy. He used traditional forms, such as paintings, as ideological and critical means of expression.
This approach resulted in the creation of an independent gallery - Galeria Kalipso. Petryk established the gallery in his own apartment in 1982, during Martial Law. It was different than other independent and anticommunist galleries of the time. The Kalipso Gallery avoided explicitly political references. Exhibitions were meant to let people experience art together and to be a part of artwork. Petryk believed art itself brings freedom.
Respecting tradition allows Petryk to use experiences associated with the traditional within other styles, from performances to objects of everyday use. He is in a constant dialog with changing reality. He draws on camp: aestheticism is combined with humor, irony, the spiri...

I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Faculty of Painting in Warsaw in 1975.

Selected exhibitions:
Gallery X, Wroclaw, Poland, 1979
Jeune Peinture, Paris, France, 1982
Polish Art Now, Eindhoven, Holland, 1986
II Biennale Sztuki Nowej, Zielona Gora, Poland, 1987
Book as Artwork, Ghent, Belgium, 1988
Porin Taide Museo, Pori, Finland, 1990
Fax Art, Middelburg, Holland, 1991
Kultura niezalezna (Independent Culture), Poznan, Poland, 2009; Warsaw, Poland, 2010, 2012
Dessin Semigeometrique, 2b+r, Warszawa, Poland, 2010
Galeria Dzialan, Tribute to Jerzy Ludwinski, Warszawa 2010.