Project: STANLEY

The Life and Work of an Imaginary Artist

The project was presented in 2009 at the SCOPE Art Show Miami

Kotwica 1

ABOUT STANLEY

Stanley's parents emigrated from Poland a few months before his birth. His mother was probably already pregnant. He was born in one of the communes founded by some sect whose practices of "love" were targeted by the American legal system, which caused its "authorities" to emigrate to one of the South American countries. When he was a few years old, his parents fled the commune with him. They were hiding in several South American countries, but it was probably the members of the sect who contributed to their premature death. Stanley was no longer living with his parents at the time, so he probably survived.

He studied in several art schools, probably in Chile, Peru and Argentina, but before his graduation he decided that the university limits him and that the diploma is an artificial and unnecessary confirmation of his maturity as an artist. He believed that the University of Arts limited more than it helps to develop. During this period, he created expressive, figurative compositions referring to pre-Columbian art. With time, perhaps under the influence of Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch, he turned to performance. Connections with pre-Columbian culture and his fascination with its bloody rituals resulted in a series of actions during which he performed self-mutilation and "painted" with blood. His actions were characterized by strong criticism of Christianity, probably caused by traumatic experiences during his stay in the commune.Stanley avoids confessing about his childhood, but from bits of memories it can be inferred that he was sexually abused during the "love" rituals of the sect.

Sex was in fact one of the most important forms of professing love for God / Christ in this sect. After 2000, he abandoned performance and video art as excessively worn-out and barren, returning to more classic forms of expression through space arrangements and series of paintings. "My Life", a series of works presenting randomly selected pages from the calendar, comes from this period. For a year, Stanley painted a picture each day of another calendar page. These are ascetic, almost monochromatic works, shockingly making people aware of the shallowness and emptiness of everyday life of modern man. The next series, "Birdwatch - Birdlovers", is a step towards computer art. Stanley combines here prints of computer-processed photos and drawings with ink applied "by hand".

The space of the paintings is filled with dead wild birds - torn by shots, crushed by the wheels of cars - already in a state of decay, the cycle ends with photos of gutted chickens decorated with fragments of intestines. In these works, as usual, he tried to mock the hypocrisy of modern civilization, on the one hand feeling sorry for the fate of homeless cats, the tragedy of whales, and on the other hand indifferent to the fate of the creatures that are the foundation of our satiety. "Textures" also come from this period - self-portraits consisting of several photos combined into one, similar to textures used in 3d programs