Jan Koloczek – Painted Dreams

26 January – 18 May 2019

Photos: Wojciech Rogowicz

Curated by Joanna Kurbiel

Creations made by Jan Koloczek are easily recognizable by their characteristic figures endowed with abundant flowing hair, gradually transformed into fantastic, extended spatial forms. The subject matter in his art oscillates around the Sacrum intruding into the order imposed by Life and Death. Apart from sculptures depicting  Christ, Mother of God, angels and saints, there are also  representations of the Tree of Life, the elements, the seasons and months of the year, and Zodiac signs.
The exhibition presents 97 sculptures and 17 paintings on loan from the Museum of Rural Architecture in Opole, from a private collector Bogdan Jasiński in Opole and the artist himself.

In 26 years of work as a sculptor Jan Koloczek created his own unique style, characterized by the use of intense colours and original painting designs created by the artist. Koloczek’s colour range is a result of his experiments – the artist blends his own palette without resorting to primary colours available commercialy.

For the purposes of the exhibition, the exhibits  are grouped into a few thematic cycles, for example “Rainbow”, showing figures incorporated into the band of rainbow colours, “Stellar”, alluding to the theme of the space, galaxies and stars, depictions of the Tree of Life, biblical figures of Adam and Eve, as well as other groupings of “Months”, “Elements”, “Zodiac”, “Angels” and the “Sacral” cycle including representations of Christ, Mother of God and the Archangels.

The works of art on show were created in the period 1997–2017 and demonstrate the changes in the artist’s output. The earliest examples are sacral sculptures with their oil paint polychromy, with the addition of linseed oil, dominated by gold and burgundy which create a special effect of almost Byzantine art. Later on the artist switched from oils to acrylic paints, which then led him to the creation of his own, unique and enormously rich palette of colours.

Works by the Nysa-based artist can be viewed in the Museum of Prudnik, the Open-Air Museum of Rural Architecture in Opole, and in the Wielkopolski Ethnographic Park in Dziekanowice, as well as in private art collections in Poland and abroad. Jan Kołoczek’s work was also showcased in numerous exhibitions, among which the repeated participation in the annual Festival of Flowers in Otmuchów (from 1999), the sculpting plein-air “A village that is no more” in Łosiów (2000), in the Museum in Nysa (2002), and in several exhibitions organized in the Museum in Prudnik, the Open-Air Museum of Rural Architecture in Opole and in the Wielkopolski Ethnographic Park in Dziekanowice. The artist also participated in the folklorist events held in Székesfehérvár in Hungary and Velká Bystřice in the Czech Republic.

Foto Wojciech Rogowicz

The photographs from the vernissage ➸