EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS
May 14, 2023
opening: May 5, 2023, at 19:00
exhibition: May 5–June 16, 2023
place:
Piekary Gallery, ul. St. Marcin 80/82, Poznan
CK Zamek, Rose Courtyard
exhibition open Mon.–Fri. 10:00-18:00
Free entrance
organizer:
Piekary Gallery
www.galeria-piekary.com.pl
partner:
9/11 Art Space Foundation
www.fundacjaartspace.pl
The 9/11 Art Space Foundation and Piekary Gallery invite you to the exhibition of works by Jan Pamuła Pleasure of communing with color. The creator, inspired by digital techniques, quickly became a Polish pioneer of computer art. The artist’s legacy resounds with a strong fascination with mathematics, the language of order, but also reflection on the choice of color, bringing to mind the paintings of Robert Delaunay or Paul Klee.
The first contact with the fruits of Pamuła’s work evokes an inner sense of harmony, offering a satisfying peace. It is a precise order, a strict order of form, anointing the experience of symmetry revealing itself to the viewer. Flawless perfection. Stable, geometric matter, boldly defining its ideal area. These impressions aptly fit into the code of the work of the Polish painter, graphic artist, former rector of the Academy of Fine Arts. Jan Matejko in Krakow, an art theoretician who created works in the field of traditional techniques, but also digital media. The author’s work also includes lithographs, etchings, serigraphs, woodcuts, graphic works, multi-format graphics, digital prints, computer animations and light boxes. In his assumptions, he referred to the Pythagorean “number”, a tool for ordering reality; an artist is the one who is able to capture what is chaotic in a certain structural pattern – he is able, as Arnheim puts it in the work “Art and Visual Perception”, to create perceptual concepts – he wrote in his Notebook of Art (p. 115).
The exhibited works by Jan Pamuła from the 1970s mainly present the result of his fascination with the logical order of the world. The Arrangement with a Triangle series captures the consequence of the color variants, the geometric diversity of the minimalist form. However, this asceticism does not mean poor content; the mathematical order presented in the works refers to the principles regulating reality, interlocking like evoked shapes. The conceptual layer plays the most important role in this case. It reveals the essence of symmetry, systemicity, harmonic perfection of proportions. Pamuła also pointed out that in the artistic study of geometry one can bring out the true power of color, and (…) Basically, all painting is color. For me it is especially important. (…) I feel the pleasure of communing with color (Interview with Andrzej Szczepaniak).
Jan Pamuła (born January 16, 1944 in Spytkowice, died June 24, 2022) in 1961 began painting and graphic studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Long afterwards, he was associated with his alma mater, where in 1996 he was awarded the title of full professor at the Department of Visual Arts. In the years 1996-2002, he also held the position of vice-chancellor of the university, after which he held the position of rector for two terms (2002-2008).
The exhibition is a meeting with an extraordinary personality whose works have been appreciated by numerous museum institutions. Pamuła’s works were presented, among others, by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Albertina in Vienna, the National Museum in Warsaw, and the National Museum in Krakow. He was awarded by the 10th International Biennale of Contemporary Graphics BIECTR, Trois-Rivières in Canada, the International Exhibition of Small Graphic Forms in Łódź, the Norwegian International Print Triennial in Fredrikstad; Pamuła’s computer drawings also gained an international context, Computer Series I and Computer Series II were created at Atelier de Recherches et Techniques Avancées at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, the series Image and NY are the result of a scholarship at the New York Institute of Technology (exhibited at the NY Digital Salon). His name is listed in the catalog of the Tama International Print Exhibition Poland & Japan in Tokyo. Guanlan, the fruit of a stay in China, was created at the Guanlan Graphic Center; Ostrava is the result of work at the International Serigraphy Symposium at the University of Ostrava. A wide selection of Jan Pamuła’s works was also shown in 2018 at the Abstrakce.PL exhibition at the Museum of Art in Olomouc. Two years later, the MUO presented the artist’s individual retrospective exhibition.
Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund.
