PRZEMEK BRANAS
photo: Yulia Krivich, 2019
I was born in 1987. I come from the city of Jarosław but I live and work in Warsaw. I operate on the intersection of many media including performance, video, and installation. I am never satisfied with any single material or aesthetic. I find it more inspiring to borrow and accommodate diverse cultural codes. While I like to tell stories, what captures my imagination more than the story itself is how it is constructed: its invisible joints, all its cracks, gaps, and folds. My practice treads the line between the core and the periphery, objects and their performativity, voyeurism and subjects which emerge in motion.
I like to think of myself as an artisan, a figure of the Enlightenment turn, the producer of tangible forms at my workshop, a 19 th century ethnographer or researcher browsing through archives, compiling materials and collecting affects, bringing them into the fold of contemporary motifs. I like to explore social contexts. Even if political rebellion has spent the last of its resources, I believe that artists should pick on the social body, irritate the public, reveal what has been repressed, including fears and traumas, desires and wants.
Rather than annihilating all existing representations, artists should expand and transform them, engage in subversive thinking and turn it into an instrument of identitarian emancipation. In this sense, from the perspective of neopoetic metaphor, my projects are like islands, autonomous creations which exist for their own sake even as they are part of archipelagos and multi-tiered constellations. They represent a complete narrative whose meanings never stop emerging from the intertwined fabric. Now their structure looks like a Baroque patchwork, now more like a Chinese box. The Deleuzian notion of rhizome speaks to me, as does Bernard Stiegler’s concept which suggests that technics is inorganic organised matter, a substitute or prosthetic for body and bodies. I focus on the transformation of static relations into performative action but what I find genuinely interesting is all the states in between.
Przemek Branas
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021
A Day of Absence, Cricoteka, Cracow, PL
Model of a Head of a Man Who Missed Out Everything,
Leto Gallery, Warsaw,PL
2020
2019
I Is Somebody Else, Centrala Space, Birmingham, England
I Wanna Be Your Colonizer, Gdańsk City Gallery, Gdańsk, PL
2018
Moonrise, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, PL
Mountain Cosmos Head, Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, PL
2017
Just a Dick/ Kawał Chuja, Grey House Gallery, Cracow, PL
Ten Guys in One Car, Sesama Gallery, Yogjakarta, Indonesia
2016
The birth of Black and White, Księgarnia|Wystawa, Kraków, PL
Worh–shop, Contemporary Art Center, Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, PL
Masters Peasants Peasants Masters, (with K.Radziszewski) , BWA Sokół,Nowy Sącz, PL
Untitled, Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic
2014
Hiccup, Gallery Re, MOCAK, Cracow, curator E.Tatar
2013
M.O.R.O, Wschodnia Gallery, Łódź, PL
(nie)swój/(non)own, Gdańska Galeria Miejska, Gdańsk, PL
2010
mapa (nie)pamięci, with S, Galon, Instytut Sztuki Wyspa, Gdańsk, PL
RESIDENCY
2018 Villa Romana, Florence, Italy
2018 Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, PL
2017 Terra Foundation for American Art, Giverny, France
2017 Sesama Gallery, Yogjakarta, Indonesia
2016 Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic,
2011 Spektartulum , Posneck, Germany
AWARDS
2017 2nd prize Spojrzenia/Views Deutsche Bank and Zachęta National Gallery Prize, Warsaw, PL
2016 1st prize in Foundtation Grey House, Grey House Gallery, Cracow, PL
2015 Laureate of competition Telo kao rezim/Body as a regime, Belgrad, Serbia
EDUCATION
2019 PhD, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Studies, Multimedia Department at the University of Art in Poznan, PL
2013 M.A, Academy of Fine Arts, Intermedia Department, Performance Art Studio Cracow, PL
2010 Most/Bridge Grant in artist Grzegorz Klaman, Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, PL
2011 B.A- Academy of Fine Arts, Cracow, Poland, Intermedia Department, Performance Art Studio
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS
2021
Open Departments / Closed Departments, Central Museum of Textiles, Łódź, PL
Disassembly, KMO Katowice, PL
2020
Milk me sugar, Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, PL
Tropical sun dream, Tatra Museum, Zakopane, PL
2019
Three Plagues, Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, PL
2018
Waiting For Another Comming, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnus, Lithuania
2017
Spojrzenia Deutsche Bank Award Exhibition, Zachęta National Gallery, Warsaw, PL
7th Young Triennial in Orońsko, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, PL
2016
participation in the project devoted to the artist Moshe Kupferman, BWA Tarnów, Gdańsk City Gallery, Gdańsk, PL
Masters Peasants Peasants Masters (alongside Karol Radziszewski), BWA Sokół, Nowy Sącz, PL
performance I Keep on Casting Geometric Shadows, Studio Gallery, Warsaw, PL
Communis – Renegotiating Community, Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, PL
Midnight Show, BWA Wrocław, PL
City.Cutout, BWA Tarnów PL
Untitled, performance, Return to the Island of South: Beyond the Boundary, Aisa / Europe, Kaohsiung and Tainan, Taiwan
Untitled, performance The 10th GUYU ACTION Performance Art Festival Shenzen, China
Untitled, performance, Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies CCCD Artspace - Green Wave Art, Hong Kong
Fight for a fire, GreyHouse Gallery, Cracow, PL
2015
Ars moriendi, BWA Tarnów, PL
2014
performance day,Domin(a)ction of space II, Contemporary Art Centre, Ujazdowski Castle, Warszawa, PL
performance Domin(a)ction of space I, Turbine Hale, Giswill, Switzerland
LOVE, PGS Gallery, Sopot, PL
2013
performance Draft, PERFORMANCES POLONAISES -Le Lieu, centre en art actuel, Quebec City, Canada
2011
XIII’International Performance Festival „Interakcje” Piotrków Trybunalski, PL
2010
Epaf International Perfrmance Festival,Contemporary Art Center, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, PL
