Wojciech GORĄCZNIAK (b. 1976), Usztalugowanie, 2001

oil, canvas; 180 x 140 cm; on the back author's inscription: "Usztalugowanie" 2001 Poznań / ol. na Płótnie / Wojciech Gorączniak.
Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań from 1996 to 2001 (diploma in painting and drawing in the studio of Prof. Norbert Skupniewicz and Prof. Maciej Haufa). Since 2008, he has been working at the University of Arts in Poznan. Until 2016, he worked as an assistant professor in Prof. Andrzej Zdanowicz's 4th Painting Studio. He currently serves as head of doctoral studies at the Faculty of Painting and Drawing at UAP, as well as the duties of head of the 8th Painting Studio.
"Wojciech Gorączniak's unhurriedly built imagery subjects reality to keen observation. It seems to me that it is actually a contemplation of both reality and the process of depiction. Being on the verge of sensuality and utopia, the artist's abstract-figurative imagery seems to be both a projection of the order of ideal worlds, as well as a discreet, reflective observation and also a registration of the constant transformation of the substance of the world, its objects and subjects. The crystalline simplicity with simultaneous duality and the non-obvious, because situated between different articulations, status of the "heroes" of Wojtek Gorączniak's painting is the condition for the existence of this extremely fascinating artistic form and attitude. In this suspension, between the world of abstraction and the transformed object, there is some kind of alchemical reaction that produces a special staging space. Between the energy of red and black, Wojciech Gorączniak constructs a dialogue of form and questions - about what is most essential and usually inexpressible - about the nature of things, about the manifestations of being. A place with an artificial identity, evoked and frozen in time, creates an imagined, "peeped at" and at the same time artificial image space. This allows Gorączniak to play a kind of reflexive game - both with reality and with its very perception. The object is not a sign, nor is it its designator, it seems to be 'looked through' or created, constructed, or perhaps it is only a reflection, an illusion."
(Adam Nowaczyk, text to the exhibition "Materializations", Lazienna Gallery, Poznań 2015.)