Mateusz Kołek. Entangled States

„Mateusz Kołek’s Kraków is magical, surprising, and very much Far-Eastern, while also being familiar, indigenous, even though ‘parallel’ in some way. Places that Cracovians know well and pass through or by on a daily basis suddenly take on a magical quality. They evoke emotions akin to those that we experience when viewing woodblock prints, imagining the time of samurai and geisha. A journey through this Kraków is far from everyday experience. It enables us to look at what is familiar in a new, fresh, unexpected and unpredictable way.

In our story, as we experience the adventure of Mateusz Kołek’s work, Kraków surfaces twice. The artist’s studio and the series Kraków provide the starting and concluding points for the tale of a journey into the world of imagination, which Mateusz once described as follows: “On the outside, you can hardly imagine a more static job: a desk, a chair, a sheet of paper, a pencil, a monitor, and hours spent in a single position. It’s a lot more interesting on the inside.”
Just how interesting? The only way to find out is by stepping inside the unpredictable”. (Przemysław Wideł, curator of the exhibition)