Saturday,
04 May
No-Flight Zone
Unprecedented attacks on civilians, destruction of entire blocks of streets, houses, workplaces, monuments, and cemeteries. All this is taking place like never before in any conflict, under the watchful eye of cameras, social media, almost live. People are dying, culture is dying, humanity is being lost somewhere. All this happens next to us, next door. Can all of it be rebuilt? Probably yes, but it will probably take several generations. Will it be in the same form? Probably not. Will this happen again? History always repeats itself.
Mariusz Waras
Born in 1978 in Gdynia, habilitated doctor, currently employed as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, where he runs the Street Art Studio at the Faculty of Architecture and Design, Architecture of Cultural Spaces. He defended his master’s and doctoral diplomas at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, in 2008-2014 he was an assistant to prof. Jerzy Ostrogórski in the Painting Studio, in 2010-2013 he ran the Graphic Design Studio at the Faculty of Sculpture and Intermedia, then between 2013 and 2014 he was an assistant to prof. Henryk Cześnik in his painting studio. From 2014 to 2021, he ran the Image and Street Art Studio at the Faculty of Painting and New Media at the Academy of Art in Szczecin. In addition to academic work, he deals with graphic design, creating spatial installations and large-format painting. It is as the creator of murals, in particular the early project “m-city” – which has become his stylistic showcase, that Mariusz Waras is now recognized as one of the world’s most important street-art creators. From the very beginning, he built his works around urban aesthetics, using architectural motifs, industrial infrastructure – including shipbuilding and means of transport. While style is evolving, it remains graphically modest and blunt. Among the initially dehumanized landscapes and machines in production and destruction, playing with the unlimited possibility of compilation in the ever-expanding lexicon of elements, a place has started to appear for statements about personal thoughts, manifestos, sometimes taking the form of a concise commentary on current events – winking at one of the sources street art. He is also a curator of exhibitions and artistic events. Co-founder of the POGODA think tank dealing with the management of broadly understood culture. Since 2018, he has been the curator of the Dictador Art Masters festival held at a distillery in the Colombian jungle. This place is regularly visited by the world’s leading artists of street art, urban art and contemporary art.