Filip Rybkowski
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2023
1991
Poland
wanda
Filip Rybkowski's (b. 1991) practice is based on painting, installation, video and photography. His works transcend the traditional boundaries of painting, entering the field of mosaic, objet trouvé and installation. Rybkowski combines the poetics of the fragment, juxtaposing original artefacts with reconstructions and images. He is interested in the problematic status of “authenticity” and the processes of a historical construction of memory. In his most recent projects, his basic tool is the critical act of reconstruction combined with reflection on the political nature of the gesture of restoration, preservation and conservation. He is a co-founder of the Piana Foundation and Piana Gallery, which support and promote young artists.
Great battle of the doves for the last olive branch, 2022
gypsum, paper, glue, wood, acrylic mass, gouache on plywood
158 × 122 cm
"Having a set of visualities at one's disposal, and for concrete purposes – this might be the descriptive definition of a pictorial propaganda, which has many times assisted in the colonial appropriation of the concrete areas.
Pictorial artefacts, as well as those entirely tangible ones, are substrates that find their application in the context of historical politics, specific ideologies designed to confirm the circulating versions of memory, thus indicating what the present condition should be. After all, the creators of national antiquities exhibitions were also aware that the spirit of patrio ...
Humpty Dumpty reconstruction III, 2022
gypsum, canvas, paper, glue, chalk, wood, acrylic mass, gouache on plywood
93x125 cm
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."*
In the rhyme above is an image of a very specific catastrophe, shattering into pieces and an attempt to reassemble someone / something back together again. On a level of creative practice, it is a gesture of reconstruction which he constantly repeats, of fitting together fragments that are not necessarily contiguous. Despite an effort, there is also the futility of trying in it, as the reconstruction is never absolutely pe ...
Bones reconstruction I-II, 2023
gouache, chalk, pulment, pigment, acrylic mass, titanium, acrylic, plasterboard, glue, canvas, plywood, aluminum frame
80 × 65 cm
Locating the discourse close to the body again, if bone transforms into chalk, it can well transform into a titanium, which will restore the displaced elements to their correct positions. The motif of the hand, which artist uses, points our attention to the very gesture of reconstruction, making an active effort to endow the body with correct form and posture. However, as it happens, repair can be close to tearing apart, for in order for something to be repaired it must be broken in the first place.
Hence, it is not wholly clear whether hands twisting the spine – in a work called Posture ...
Posture Study (sculpture), 2023, acrylic, marble dust, fiberglass, metal, vice, 33 × 50 × 44 cm
Edition of 3 + I AP
Posture Study (painting), 2023, tiles, acrylic paste, pulment, pigment, plastic, metal, glass, ceramic plaster, transfer from wall on paper, acrylic, gouache, plywood on wooden stretcher, 126 × 126 cm
Palimpsest II, 2022
gypsum, paper, wood, aluminum, canvas, glue, acrylic paste, acrylic, gouache on plywood
90 × 80 cm
Palimpsest III (clouds), 2023
gypsum, paper, wood, aluminum, canvas, glue, acrylic paste, acrylic, gouache on plywood
60 × 50 cm
Our material and temporal being-in-the-world is by definition a hybrid experience of various temporal references. At every moment, the materials of the world confront us with a great mosaic of coexisting temporal horizons that create networks and connections between different times, different pasts. This network not only weaves and gathers various past and future times, but also projects itself, by virtue of its "nature" and permanence, towards the past. (1)
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The Palimpsest series refers to a method of using the same material to rewrite new content. In writing, previously indelibly faded texts would, over time, begin to become visible again on the surface of the material used, while rendering later current records. The layering of the images, the motifs used, the types of materials used to construct them and their origin suggest both a process of of eroding meanings and content, as well as the course of their layering and constant struggle for visibility.
The objects in the Accident Study series are built from post-accident elements of Catlike cycling helmets. The function of the helmet is to absorb the energy of the impact and partially dissipate it by cracking its structure. As a result of the accident, these helmets were irretrievably deprived of their function and became useless.
Reconstructed into a coherent but confabulatory whole, the helmets resemble archaeological artifacts whose original function has been irretrievably obliterated by time. Knowing the original purpose of the objects shifts their context toward the categ ...
In Rybkowski's artistic practice, history assembled in various ways is exchanged into situations where the body also gets assembled and reconstructed. As such, it is the subject of artist's interest when he engages into the preparation of such works as Study of Residue (Contrapposto) and Study of Residue (Figure). It then undergoes transformations and, out from its ordinary human form, morphs into something resemblimg rock formations, stalactites and stalagmites formed in a slow process of erosion. This expression of chalky rock is made possible due to its softness, which it owes to its point of origin. Built upon the bones and organic remnants, it is itself the effect of transformation of once living organisms into an inanimate matter.
- fragment of text by Szymon Maliborski With Displacement / Exhibition of Not Only Domestic Antiquities
(text for the exhibition With Displacement at wanda gallery)