born 1979 in Poznań
In 2005, Bąkowski graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. He is an author of animations and videos, objects, audioinstallations, audioperformances and radio dramas. A poet and a musician, Bąkowski is also a leader of the bands KOT, NIWEA and Czykita, as well as a co-founder of the artistic group PENERSTWO and an editor-in-chief of the PÓŁMROK magazine.
In his pieces, the artist combines visual arts, animation, alternative music and poetry. Expressive images from Bąkowski’s films are accompanied by a characteristic soundtrack, in which the artist in a low, hypnotic voice pronounces colloquial phrases, coined to resemble informal speech. What inspires him is ordinary, everyday life, with all its banality, anomalies and the aesthetics of ugliness. By means of his “penerstwo” vision of reality, he attempts to discuss existential issues, among others the problem of the originality of an individual being lost in the crowd.
Wojciech Bąkowski, Beauty, 2009, video-performance, 35’00
Video footage of a performance carried out by the artist to the song Beauty by the band KOT (recorded in 2004). The TV screen is situated at the height of the viewer’s head. The frame is filled by the motionless shaven head of the artist who stares straight into the camera with his eyes wide open. Throughout the entire duration of the performance, Bąkowski strove to refrain from winking, and therefore lacrimation soon followed. “The music is synchronised with the tears falling down the artist’s face.” A very important layer are also the lyrics recited to the heavy sounds of the musical piece. The monochrome minimalistic or even grim aesthetics of the work, the artist’s direct turn towards the viewer, his motionless face – all these elements are at odds with the common vision of eponymous beauty. The work appears as a manifesto of a particularly sensitive artist, who locates the dark side of the world and human personality at the heart of his interests and accepts the burden of “telling it like it is.”
