Tomasz Partyka (b. 1978, Grudziądz), "Turquoise," 2009

Exhibited
Tomasz Partyka, "Shadows of the masters", Entropia Gallery, Wroclaw, 8.10-29.10.2010
Tomasz Partyka, "Shadows of the masters", ZERO Gallery, Berlin, 6.03-4.02.2009

Biography
Between 2000 and 2005 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, where he attended the painting studio of Prof. Jerzy Kalucki and Prof. Wojciech Lazarczyk, as well as the video studio of Marek Wasilewski. He is affiliated with Le Guern Gallery in Warsaw. He lives and works in Poznań.

His painting is sometimes compared to Basquiat. Some of his paintings resemble the American's canvases in terms of expression or use of text, as well as being rooted in street-art, the contemporary "naive painting" of urban murals. Drawing on numerous pop-culture and mass-media inspirations, Partyka mixes text and sketchy, expressive drawings to create mélanges that are playful in nature and even explosive. His work is remarkably stylistically diverse. He paints his paintings hastily, some give the impression of being unfinished, mere sketches or notes, repeatedly reworked, crossed out and painted/written over again. Many of the motifs on his canvases are quotations, the sources of which would have to be found in newspapers, the Internet or film. He called one of his solo exhibitions "From his great-grandfather," which Justyna Kowalska interpreted as a

"a declaration of his love for found-footage aesthetics - his paintings consist of jumbled fragments of forgotten magazines, characters from daily newspapers, feature and animated films."

Word plays an important role in Partyka's paintings. It is no accident that they are compared to notes. The inscriptions with which he covers his canvases (often with a simple marker pen) sometimes remain illegible, sometimes seem to be mere gibberish, but they always add up to a specific visual experience, evoking associations with brainstorming, intense work, a record of a thought that suddenly came to someone's mind, or scribbles written unconsciously during a telephone conversation. In addition to a superficial reading, these texts can also be perceived through the prism of the chaos of information produced by mass media. Some images give the impression of a naïve attempt to organize them, for example, by listing pairs of famous twins, juxtaposing nicknames used by celebrities with their completely meaningless real names, creating lists of famous Charleses (Same Czarlsy, 2006). In the Generation series (2006), in turn, Partyka wrote down short Polish-German dialogues composed of curse words in both languages. Paintings "written" and containing other motifs, juxtaposed with each other, can give the impression of a stream of consciousness (e.g. Frieze Seven, 2005).

Tomasz Partyka's paintings also show a fascination with the popularity of fictional characters inhabiting the pages of comic books and animated films, such as the robot Bender (2006) from the animated series "Futurama" or the Daltons from the comic book series about Lucky Luke. Some of the paintings are collage compositions, where reproductions find their continuation in the painting layer. Sometimes the anecdote hides behind the canvas, without being readable from it, and whose trace can be found in the title of the work. For example, in the painting entitled Leap of a Tank (2007) Partyka painted a cloud of dust and dust caused by such a maneuver. According to Marcin Krasny, in Partyka's painting

"the absurd context reverses the meanings of the pop-cultural schemes behind these images. (...) The result is paintings that grotesquely transform the popular iconosphere and the not-so-pleasant political reality hiding underneath. They are caricatures, but also small, humorous visual essays on racism, xenophobia, totalitarianism and dictatorship of the individual, often with ironic overtones."

Tomasz Partyka is also the author of films (e.g. Samurai, revealing the behind-the-scenes of the filming of the etude, or Change, 2004). He has participated in many film festivals, including the 35th International Film Festival in Rotterdam (2006), the 8th Up-and-coming International Film Festival in Hannover (2005), the 11th Bristol International Short Film Festival in Bristol (2005), and the International Short Film Fastival in Hamburg (2005).

Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, December 2008

Selected solo exhibitions:

2005
- "Bêc, Bêc" - Le Guern Gallery, Warsaw
- "Georgia on my Mind" - Galeria Pies, Poznań
2006 - "Films and Paintings" - Les Complices, Zurich.
2007
- "Paintings" - Kont Gallery, Lublin
- "From grandfather great-grandfather" - Le Guern Gallery, Warsaw

Selected group exhibitions:

2002 - "Counterperformance" - Kont Gallery, Lublin.
2005
- "Horizon of collisions" - Art Fair Poznań 2005
- 7th Eugeniusz Geppert Competition of Young Artists - BWA Awangarda, Wrocław
- "Fresh" - Kogart Gallery, Budapest.
- "WRO 05" - XI International Media Art Biennale - Wroclaw, Poland
2006
- "Time of Culture" - Program Gallery, Warsaw
- "Demos Kratos. Power of the People" - Klima Bocheńska Gallery, Reed Factory Art Center, Warsaw; BWA Bielska Gallery, Bielsko-Biala (2007)
- "Fruhstück Mittag Kaffee Abendbrot" - Happen Studio, Berlin.
2007
- "From Poland?" - Kasia Kay Art Project Gallery, Chicago
- "Incubator" - CCA Laznia, Gdansk