Igor Omulecki

Piękło (2010)

www.omulecki.com Program: Vernissage Pavilion B Friday (19.03) 09:00 p.m.

Igor Omulecki – born in 1973 in Łódź. In 1994-98 he studied at the Film School in Łódź at two departments: Cinematography and TV Production, and Photography. A participant of many national and foreign exhibitions (i.a. Great Britain, Israel, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Hungary ).

Igor Omulecki belongs to the generation of photographers, whose sensitivity has been shaping at the breakthrough of two eras: the decadent communism and the beginning of Polish turbo-capitalism. The generation of the so called 70’s shapes the contemporary Polish culture and art to a great extent. Also Igor Omulecki – in spite of the fact that he made his debut quite recently – is already well known to critics, curators, and to wide gallery audience. He has been standing out from the Polish artistic scene since the very beginning due to his consistent exploration of kitsch aesthetics and references to the absurd poetics. Omulecki’s early photographs hold a lot from the surrealistic experience. It is neither the Paris nor the Brussels one, but the familiar, our, Polish, post-communistic experience. At the same time Omulecki’s photographs have quickly reached the status of generation icons thanks to their publications in large-circulation lifestyle magazines (the famous photo of Maria Janion, 2002). Cult portrait series, crazy fashion sessions and extraordinary advertisement photographs have shaped the image of Igor Omulecki at the beginning of his photographic career. The works from the series such as Beautiful People (2004), Family Album (2005), and Poland (2004-6) have gradually entered the more exclusive gallery circulation. Omulecki’s characteristic and visually strong photographs were becoming hallmarks of such exhibitions as Teraz Polska! (2006) or New documentary- makers (2006). A symbolic potential of those pictures describing the generation experience in a laconic way, convinced both the critics and the audience. Meanwhile, Omulecki started reaching for the new motives, this time more personal ones – but not historical like in the case of the Family Album, yet belonging to the direct experience of the developing relationship with a woman. That is how an incredibly intimate and beautiful series of photos of his pregnant partner were created. They were presented on the Venus exhibition (2008) and they also constituted a background for a Lucy project showed in a leading Warsaw gallery (2009).What is important, the appearance of distinct personal motives was accompanied by withdrawal of the photographic medium. The exhibition in Lokal_30 consisted of objects, installations and film-projections. A film thread – meaning in a sense the artist’s return to the times of his studies at the legendary Łódź Film School – clearly continued in the project, being a result of the cooperation with a Gym Society music collective (2008-9). Paradoxically, the artist’s last realizations allow for better observation and evaluation of his previous photographic works. Omulecki’s output is situated between a staging and a new document. It is placed between post-conceptual gallery art and pop-culture experience and between object sensitivity and action attitude. The artist abolishes all the customary boundaries and conventions and demolishes the habits of both artistic and photographic criticism. He also leaves the obligatory scheme and uses extremely diverse media, such as performance, installation, movie and photography. All the techniques seem to be perfect for the presentation of this incredibly original vision of the XXI century Poland’s reality.

Adam Mazur