Wladyslaw Kazmierczak

Wladyslaw Kazmierczak (June 27, 1951) is a Polish performance artist and curator, born in Psary, in Greater Poland Voivodeship. He studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (1971–1976) under Jonasz Stern.[1]

Kazmierczak began creating performance art actions in 1974 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. After 1976 he produced site specific performances, and performed in the streets of the city and in public spaces. His first gallery performance was In the run at the "Pryzmat" Gallery in Kraków in 1979.

The martial law

In the early 1980s Kazmierczak produced a number of political performances in Poland. The imposition of the martial law on December 13, 1981, however, led to state-sanctioned closure of privately run galleries. Kazmierczak's last performance before this date was the piece, If I think about totalitarianism, If I think about Marcel Duchamp. After 1981 he performed from time to time, individually or with the Konger group, but not in state owned galleries. He performed work in Darmstadt, Germany and Paris.[1]

In 1991 Kazmierczak became director of the Baltycka Galeria Sztuki Wspolczesnej (Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art) in Słupsk, Poland. Since 1993 he has also been a curator of the oldest performance art event in Poland the International Performance Art Festival "Castle of Imagination"[2] taking place annually in various locations across the country. In 1995 he performed in Tokyo, Nagano, Quebec, Paris and Pusan in Korea. He has also performed in performance art festivals in Rome, Glasgow, Belfast, Paris, Dublin, Seoul, Budapest, Berlin, Mexico City, Vilnius, New York City, Tokyo, Pusan, Munchen, Kraków, and Limerick among others.

In 1997 Kazmierczak began performing with Ewa Rybska. The duo Rybska & Kazmierczak have performed over 120 works in 20 different countries. Recent performance pieces include: Pulp Fiction based on Tarantino's film, Ecstasy which was related to techno culture, Modern Talking a piece that analyzed the relation between modernism and postmodernism, and Body & East about the fall of communist ideology.

As curator, Kazmierczak organized an exhibition of the work of controversial Polish artist Dorota Nieznalska at his Baszta Czarownic (Witches' Tower) gallery in Słupsk in 2003, cancelled under pressure from a local politician.[3] In 2006, after further political criticism from the local League of Polish Families he relocated to the UK with Ewa Rybska.

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