MATEUSZ WOŹNIAK
ABOUTCONTACT
IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING
Solo exhibition2025 June 18-24, Crakow, Grodzka 43
At the heart of this exhibition lie questions of masculinity. Not the simple ones, not the ideological ones. Rather, the ones that tremble under the skin — questions of the body and presence, of strength that can be both caring and destructive.
This is not an affirmation. Nor a deconstruction.
It’s an attempt to capture something that resists being named.
Something that holds tension — before it can be judged.
“The Body and the Bark”
Art is about expressing things that cannot be said in any other way.
That is exactly what writing my own books feels like. If I could tell them over a drink in a bar, or sum them up in a post, I would never bother with novel-writing. What’s more, before I begin the process, I don’t really know what the book will be about. I gather materials, prepare a monstrous outline, talk to consultants, know how the action will unfold and who the characters will be. But what will that deeper content turn out to be? What will I truly say? That remains a mystery, revealed only in the moment when my fingers race across the keyboard.
Art does not spring from certainty, from a clear recognition of a situation, but from mistakes, from lies, from fears, from escapes, from blind searching, from trying out tools, from the honesty of the heart and the terror that dwells within it. That is the feeling I get when I look at Mateusz Woźniak’s photographs.
I lack a critical apparatus, even though photography remains, in some sense, my dream. I would like to take pictures—ideally, ones as good as these. And it is not even about the beautifully captured nakedness of the body, contrasted, in some way, with the texture of tree bark. Human beings and trees are alike in at least one respect—they are strong and fragile at once. Slam your head against a chestnut tree, and you’ll split it open. Yet all it takes is an axe, and the trunk will fall. In the same way, even the hardest human heart can break.
These images stand upon contradiction. At least that’s how I perceive them. Harmoniously composed, they seem to conceal serenity within themselves. After all, what could be calmer, at first glance, than a tree? And yet the three captured against the backdrop of a housing estate look as though they are waving at us—they remind me a little of those deck hands responsible for guiding fighter jets safely onto an aircraft carrier. Another tree—my favorite image—pressed tight within the frame, leafless, twists like hands deformed by arthritis. It screams in pain, though of course it cannot scream. It moves while remaining motionless. Like a photograph.
I see a similar, deliberate contradiction in the images depicting men. Fist against fist. Two bodies entwined, clinging painfully. Is it love, or is it a fight? Likely both, for infatuation—especially the overwhelming kind—often turns into a battlefield. That is how we love. It will not be otherwise.
Woźniak understands this almost Nietzschean paradox of life, this vast indeterminacy, the dark whirl shot through with sunlight, the churning of feelings, reason, and what lies unconscious. He captures that truth—or rather, fragments of truth—in his beautiful photographs.
-Łukasz Orbitowski
Projection room - contains projections of black and white silver-gelatin slides
GOLDEN HOUR
Group exhibitionPIANA Gallery Crakow 2023
“The golden hour is the time just after sunrise and before sunset, when the sun emits its characteristic light of a warm, golden hue. Most often, it is the beginnings and endings that prove the most spectacular.
The golden hour is also a concept from the field of emergency medicine, introduced in 1961 by R. Adams Cowley. It defines the time in which a person in a life-threatening condition should reach a hospital or another facility where professional help can be provided.
Few things are more natural and inevitable than the succession of beginnings and endings. What varies is the span of time that separates one from the other.
In less than three years, we have organized 29 exhibitions. Wishing to honor this shared effort and extend the perspective of Piana’s duration, we have invited to this exhibition—all with small works—everyone with whom we have had the pleasure of collaborating so far. Half of the proceeds from the sale of the works will go to our foundation, helping us to build a more stable outlook for our future curatorial and exhibition activities.” - Piana
INEFFECTIVE ACT / ACTIVELY EFFECTIVE
Crakow 2023Video essay, version 1
The search for a purpose in reality. Searching for tools to record this reality. The search for meaning to stop at meaning in the search and discursive-intuitive compilation of the resulting pictorial and textual forms, with the intention that between them another creation/form/content/purpose/sense is created?
“There are no telegrams on Tralfamadore. But you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message - describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once , not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
It looked somewhat different
Duet exhibition - artist Patryk Staruch and Mateusz WoźniakPIANA Gallery Crakow 2022
“The life of the modern city and its inhabitants is irrevocably shaped by mechanical reproduction - woven from billions of snapshots forming pulsating constellations it is impossible to conceive outside the various conventions of screen mediation.
Patryk Staruch and Mateusz Wozniak throw us into the middle of this visual theater, whose heroes and heroines, despite the fact that their faces tell us nothing, try to play an ambiguous performance in front of us. Blinded by flash, silhouettes flit before our tired eyes, drawing sharply against the soft nocturnal background. The figures disappear and someone else appears in their place. There seems to be no general law that can regulate this stage movement. However, despite the impression of pure spontaneity, these scenes turn out to be carefully directed. Wozniak's patiently selected frames, chosen from his photographic archive subjected to constant processing and constant editing, meet the intricately composed images of the Old Man.Does the welding of photography and reality make me feel any need to record, or does this connection really exist? - Matthew asks. What is and what does this welding look like? Who is the welder? Perhaps a better term would be "knot", like a Gordian knot. For what is the reality in which I move around catching only imponderables? Such a clever word, and the knot I'd most like to cut. But. Cut you can't, untie you can't either, and yet you try.Something emerges from the chaos of reality, if only for a moment. For a moment, purpose mixes completely with meaninglessness, so that they can no longer be completely separated.
It is possible that this hastily put together story carries a moral, but we need to sharpen our senses so as not to lose sight of it.
The protagonists of my works live in light-polluted cities, at the same time they crave a view of the edgelessness of space, says Patrick. They feel a growing hunger and longing for something great, perhaps forever deprived of the tools to achieve their goal. ” - Piana
Photo documentation by Filip Rybkowski