Marcin KOWALIKMarcin Kowalik was born in Zamość in 1981 and he gra-

duated from the local high school of fine arts.

From 2001 – 2006 he studied painting at the Academy of

Fine Arts in Cracow in the workshop of professor Adam

Wsiołkowski. Under his supervision he also achieved

the PhD degree. Currently he takes the position of his

assistant in his studio.

Kowalik performs painting and art within the scope of

installations, object and performance.

He is an organizer, art curator and artistic supervisor.

He was a scholarship holder of many scholarship pro-

grammes, for example of Minister of Culture and National

Heritage (2001), The President of Zamość (2002), Crosskick

Academie, Berlin (2007), PhD Scholarship of Academy

of Fines Art in Cracow (2008), Ateliers Höherweg 271,

Düsseldorf (2008), Grazzell’s scholarship (2009) and The

Scholarship of creative President of Cracow City (2011).

Currently, he lives and creates in Cracow. Privately, he

is a husband and father of two sons.

GenesisI am the first viewer of my paintings. I would like to start with the genesis of my artistic

way to indicate the importance of those words in my work.

I started discovering painting as such from working from nature but, with time, I channe-

led my interests towards focusing on a painting itself. With hindsight, my painting from

nature was never just about photographic or impressionistic coping the observed nature

on two-dimensional canvass. I also put effort into working on composition, achieving

colour harmony of a painting and other formal issues, but still they remained marginalized.

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Space of travel - compilation, acrylic, 130x200 cm, 2012

The Space of TravelAt the next stage, I focused on creating the artistic world from scratch. The reason for doing that

was an idea (my diploma The Space of Travel 2006). Unlike my previous work on objective or

subjective reflecting the nature, it was an attempt to present a thought, an impression. Thanks to

that project I started to pay more attention to the process of creation.

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The Interior od a carriage, acrylic, 55x65 cm, 2012 The View-After, oil, 110x140 cm, 2006

Contemplation II, oil, 110x140 cm, 2012 Wagon, oil, 110x140 cm, 2006

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Mountain II, acrylic, 100x100 cm, 2012

Landscape in a BoxThe cycle is a result of my experience from plein-air painting.

I presented laws of physics and natural phenomena in a schematic way,

often presented individually, isolated from a general context.

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Tubes, acrylic, 90x130 cm, 2010

Forest Line, acrylic, 80x130 cm, 2012

Cyclone, acrylic/oil, 77x140 cm, 2012

Forrest as such by Immanuel Kant, acrylic, 50x80 cm, 2012

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Aquarium, mixed media, 55x125 cm, 2007

A House on Marshes, acrylic, 30x60 cm, 2010

Tree study I, acrylic, 30x40 cm, 2012

Tree study II, acrylic, 30x40 cm, 2012 Tree study III, acrylic, 30x40 cm, 2012

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Line Park in Zakopane, acrylic, 70x80 cm, 2011

Lake, oil, 70x80 cm, 2011 Morning Fogs in the Mountains, acrylic, 70x80 cm, 2011

Cave, oil, 30x40 cm, 2011

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Volcano Eruption on Iceland, acrylic, 200x130 cm, 2011 Winter, acrylic, 85x140 cm, 2010

Scale Model, acrylic, 110x140 cm, 2010

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The Unknown KingdomHuman brain displays unlimited possibilities. When I enter the world of an old painting, I trigger off my

imagination. I can imagine the scene from an old painting as a three-dimensional theatre stage, where

I can walk among three-dimensional characters and object, and delve deeper into that world (also beyond

the frames of a painting). It is all based on hypotheses connected with painting facts and the ”physics” of

a particular painting. This is a form of creating a secondary world of an old painting by giving the elements

of a painting new life that is suspended in ”another parallel world”.

In order to create some painting reality to some extent separate from the one around us, I focused even more

on a painting itself at the successive stage of my work. I started to paint my paintings from other paintings,

to establish my personal dialogue with paintings of other painters, as I wanted to be closer to a painting

and the elements of its world. It all refers to my PhD diploma the Unknown Kingdom (National Museum

in Kraków), which contained all the stages and interests that had constituted my artistic way till that point.

It dealt with the problems of the painting language, looking at old paintings in the context of deconstruc-

tion as well as an artistic dialogue, i.e. an attempt to create paintings telling hypothetical painting stories

taken from the old works.

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Paint Box, acrylic, 130x200 cm, 2008

From Inside, acrylic, 130x200 cm, 2008

Air Perspective, acrylic, 130x200 cm, 2010

Bathing Girls byCourbet & Rembrandt, acrylic/oil, 130x200 cm, 2012

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Draft for ‘The Studio’, acrylic, 90x120 cm, 2009-2011

Venus and Cupid, acrylic, 90x130 cm, 2011

Music, acrylic, 130x200 cm, 2010

Purgatory II (A vision of the unsucceful suicide of Roman Lucretia according to Lucas Cranach St.), acrylic, 130x200 cm, 2012

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Florence Studio of Paolo Uccello, acrylic, 100x160 cm, 2012

Landscape in Wood by Cornelis de Bie, acrylic, 60x100 cm, 2012

Visitation, acrylic, 90x130 cm, 2010

Martin Luther’s cut-out, acrylic, 90x160 cm, 2009

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Technicolour II, acrylic, 90x150 cm, 2012

The Awakening of a Sleeping Young Man with a Burning Wick wg Nicolas Regnier, acrylic/oil, 90x150 cm, 2012

Hero test I Insp. Paolo Uccello, acrylic, 50x50 cm, 2012

Hero test II Insp. Paolo Uccello, acrylic/oil, 50x50 cm, 2012

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Hero test V Insp. Paolo Uccello, acrylic/oil, 50x50 cm, 2012

Hero test VI Insp. Paolo Uccello, acrylic/oil, 50x50 cm, 2012

Hero test III Insp. Paolo Uccello, acrylic/oil, 50x50 cm, 2012

Hero test IV Insp. Paolo Uccello, acrylic/oil, 50x50 cm, 2012

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Water Circulation, acrylic, 200x130 cm, 2008 A Holy Place by Gruenewald, acrylic, 50x110 cm, 2010

Christmas by Paolo Uccello, oil, 56x67 cm, 2012

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A source by Ingres, acrylic, 200x130 cm, 2012 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres “A source” (1856)

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Back to BasicsThe Back to Basics cycle was a significant, though underrated, stage of my artistic way. Once again

I wanted to look at my process of creation at that time from outside and see my achievements to

date objectively. I tried to analyse the works I had created till that point and draw some conclusions;

to extract and classify what had been purely my own artistic discovery; to group painting elements,

space and laws of art physics I had created. There was no exterior source of inspiration for the

cycle. I only used abstract painting motifs I had developed before connected by the structure of

phenomena of a painting’s physics in order to create space on canvas.

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Lily,acrylic, 40x60 cm, 2010/2012

Exotic wood, acrylic, 70x90 cm, 2012 Box, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2012

Box II, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2012

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The Germans hid treasure in the wall, acrylic/oil, 75x100 cm, 2012

Drawing, acrylic, 40x80 cm, 2011

Bunker, acrylic, 40x100 cm, 2010

The River, acrylic, 70x100 cm, 2010

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Christmas palm II, acrylic, 37x69 cm, 2012

Christmas palm I, acrylic, 82x24 cm, 2012

Water Circulation, acrylic, 40x60 cm, 2010

Transformations, acrylic, 40x60 cm, 2010

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The Inside of Volcanic Smoke (study), acrylic, 30x50 cm, 2011

Source,acrylic, 30x80 cm, 2010

Christmas palm III, acrylic, 50x65 cm, 2012

Cylinder Inscribed in a Cube, acrylic, 20x30 cm, 2010

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Tree Study IV, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2010

Set, acrylic, 50x70 cm, 2011 Natural Phenomena, acrylic, 50x70 cm, 2010

Deconstruction Outline I, acrylic, 70x100 cm, 2010

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The Study of Lightning Stroke, acrylicl, 50x70 cm, 2011

Flight, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2012

Deconstruction Outline II, acrylic, 40x60 cm, 2010

Smoke Study, acrylic, 50x70 cm, 2011

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Ice Baloon, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2010

Autumn Rain, acrylic, 90x130 cm, 2010 Gothic Interior, acrylic, 50x70 cm, 2011

The Making of Cuboids, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2012

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Hiding Place, acrylic, 50x70 cm, 2011 April Snow, acrylic, 85x120 cm, 2011

Magical Square, acrylic, 130x200 cm, 2008Cube, acrylic, 40x40 cm, 2010

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Spatial signal, acrylic, 90x90 cm, 2012

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Mirror PhaseFor the purpose of the next cycle, Mirror Phase, once again I had to free myself from the painting

reality in which I had remained. That cycle is not only a story about a mirror, but it also raises the

issue of the reception of art. Phenomena like interpreting a painting or projecting the viewer’s

world on a contemplated painting (which had been brought up in The Unknown Kingdom) ga-

ined their new meaning when I treated a painting as a mirror. The mirror is not so much a pane

reflecting the outside world as containing its own inner world. Contemplating our reflection in

the mirror we are not able to say for sure to what extent it is our real silhouette and to what extent

what we want to see.

The starting point for the cycle was the conception of Alice in Wonderland but I soon realised

that the mirror can be an allegory of a painting. These assumptions led me to come closer to and

understand thoroughly many processes that accompany contemplating a painting.

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Aftervision of post-projection, acrylic, 110x110 cm, 2012

A meaningless painting, acrylic, 140x140 cm, 2012

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Garden of Living Flowers, acrylic, 100x150 cm, 2011

Filter, acrylic, 90x130 cm, 2011 Stick, acrylic, 70x100 cm, 2012

The Absorbed Ones, acrylic/oil, 130x210 cm, 2012

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Post-projection, acrylic, 100x160 cm, 2012

Reflection II, acrylic, 70x80 cm, 2011

Deconstruction phase V by Paolo Uccello, acrylic/oil, 145x245 cm, 2012

Fissure, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2012

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Afterview of a Skyscraper, acrylic, 40x60 cm, 2010

Exhange of Information, acrylic, 60x80 cm, 2011

Mirror puzzle, acrylic, 40x70 cm, 2012

Pre-painting II, acrylic, 70x100 cm, 2012

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Fabric hanging from a Mirror phase VII, acrylic/oil, 55x65 cm, 2011/2012

My father’s painting in the kitchen - a church in Szczebrzeszyn, acrylic, 60x100 cm, 2012

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