Christopher Skarbek (1958), FROM THE CYCLE: OTHERS WANT TO BE GOOD, 2016.

mixed technique/canvas, 70 x 100 cm
signed p.d.: Krzysztof Skarbek, 2016
signed and dated on the reverse: Krzysztof Skarbek | 2016
Literature:
- Krzysztof Skarbek. Painting. Strangers want to be good [cat.wyst.], City Gallery in Wroclaw, Wroclaw 2016, (il.).

In 1985 he graduated from the State Higher School of Fine Arts (now the Academy of Fine Arts) in Wroclaw, receiving a degree in painting in the studio of Professor Zbigniew Karpinski. He has been a full professor since 2012. At the Painting Department of his alma mater, he runs a graduate painting studio. He is involved in easel painting, video art, creates installations, realizes actions. He has participated in 400 group exhibitions and presented his works at 60 solo exhibitions. His paintings and films are in many private and museum collections at home and abroad. His body of work includes some 40 original films, 45 art and music actions, including projects carried out by the art groups he founded: the Pearl Swallowers of the Oder and the Plastic Operations Cabinet.
Skarbek's worlds are not foreign, even if strangers are their protagonists. They are a conglomeration of what has been seen in cinema, television and other media, they are a conglomeration of "synthetic reality" and everyday, ordinary, inconspicuous experiences. This is how Skarbek developed his "personal realism," as he calls it. The artist has developed a taste for collage and the grotesque. Skarbek's worlds are consciously, programmatically even fairy-tale worlds, and their fairy-tale character is contemporary and is meant to help diagnose the state of our civilization. The place of folklore has been replaced here by mass culture, icons such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, creatures from fantasy films. It is not clear who is really "alien" - aliens or Earthlings, who is easier to communicate with, and it is not at all obvious who should be afraid of whom. One thing is certain: Skarbek's painting is addictive. The painting dazzles, intoxicates and stimulates at the same time, it is narcoticum and phantasticum in one. And it can be tasted from afar and up close. From afar we perceive the anecdote. The creator takes us into the realm of the impossible, perception is manipulated. Through the combination of different realities time and space once shrinks, then again expands. The picture can be a stopgap, it can give the viewer the impulse to continue the story on his own, then the artist ceases to be a guide and the action continues in the imagination of the viewer. Each painting mesmerizes us with its "wild" colors. The color attracts. We come closer. We see the richness of texture - a microcosm of the painter, who experiments with substrates, using gels, synthetic pastes, glitters. All this works on the viewer's emotions, intensifies sensory experience, but also strengthens the message, because form and content in Krzysztof Skarbek's work are inseparable.