Roman Stańczak
Roman Stańczak is mainly a sculptor who combines a critical stance with a mystical attitude to reality. Together with Paweł Althamer, Katarzyna Kozyra and Artur Żmijewski, he studied at Grzegorz Kowalski’s workshop at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In his sculptures, which are akin to ready-made and assemblage traditions, he subjects familiar objects to absurd and magical procedures, such as turning a kettle and a bath “inside out,” or flaying the hide off a sofa. His films also refer to the notion of bodily sculpture while using different props and prostheses to enact performance. The concept of
destroying objects of everyday use which is present in Stańczak’s work originated from one of the tasks that the students of Kowalski’s workshop were given: “A bedside table or a school desk. Any means of expression. Deprive the piece of furniture of its everyday (functional and aesthetic) functions by transforming it sculpturally, spatially and color-wise. Give it a new formal and semantic value.” In 1996, Stańczak disappeared from the art circuit. He hadn't, however, ceased to work creatively. He drew, made notes and sketches and kept a diary. He also made money conserving religious sculptures at churches. In 2013, he met his former colleague Althamer by chance, who invited Stańczak to create a new sculpture of a figure of an angel for a park in the Bródno neighborhood of Warsaw. From then on, Stańczak reappeared on the international scene and represents Poland at the Venice Biennial in 2019. W.S.
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