West Wall gallery, Skaftfell Bistro, September 26 – November 29, 2020.
My heart’s in the Highlands
My heart is not here
The eight lithographs in this exhibition were created in summer 2020 at the graphic workshop of the Technical Museum of East Iceland in Seyðisfjörður. The inspiration for Piotr’s Last Drawings was the highlands. Not the rocks, clouds, and water themselves, but the abstract matter of relationship between them and the man.
Lithography is a printing method invented in 1796, originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. An image is drawn with oil, lithographic crayon, and ink onto the surface of a smooth, level lithographic limestone plate. The print is made from the stone using a lithography press. Lithography enables the mechanical reproduction of works of art. Moreover, every print gains the status of an original, while the original drawing on the lithographic stone does not have this status. The drawing is effaced from the matrix.
Piotr Kołakowski is a Polish artist who has been living and working in Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland, for the last three years. He graduated in 2015 with a M.A. in Graphic Art and Design from Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, Poland, and studied in 2014 at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, The Netherlands. Piotr has exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Centre of Contemporary Arts Torun, Propaganda Gallery, and at Skaftfell. He received scholarships of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland in 2008 and 2013, and was shortlisted for the Hestia Artistic Journey Award in 2015. Since 2019 he has been a student of the Dieter Roth Academy in Iceland.
