opening: Friday, February 12th, at 7:00 PM
exhibition: 12.02-14.03.2025
organizator:
partner:
place: Galeria Piekary
ul. Św. Marcin 80/82
CK Zamek, Dziedziniec Różany
61-809 Poznań
exhibition open Monday – Friday 10 AM – 6 PM
admission always free
media patronage:
Piekary Gallery is pleased to invite you to an exhibition by Krzysztof Mętel (born 1993). The artist graduated in Painting from the University of Arts in Poznań, where he now works as a lecturer, having obtained his doctoral degree the in 2024. Mętel was resident at the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, participated in a student exchange with Shanghai Normal University and co-creates the artist-run space Pani Domu in Poznań. Author of Każdy kończy, kiedy mu się podoba, a book in which he interviewed young artists, among other things.
Krzysztof Mętel is interested in the creative process, in the painterly gesture and the relationship between painting and non-painterly discourses. The artist uses montage and borrowings, often working with found objects: items of uncertain status, such as a military tarpaulin exposed to sunlight or illustrations from a withdrawn Polish biometric passport, which form barely perceptible backdrop to customs stamps.
At present, the artist takes advantage of failed and rejected paintings in his work. This is the subsequent stage of working with found objects which, in this case, have been transformed by other painters. Mętel complicates the status of this collection by including his own earlier or failed creations. Intervening in their shape, format or composition as well as adding further layers of paint, he reaches a state in which the precarious, originally failed constructions begin to stabilize and regain their desired status. At the same time, traces of the original solutions are always left there to be detected.
Elements of Mętel’s biography—his former involvement in competitive sport and the history of his hometown—provide the main point of reference for these undertakings. The artist compares tackling works marked by failure to a relay race, to the second attempt after an unsuccessful one in an athletics competition or winning a match in injury time. The works delve into themes that both sport and art share: spectacle, success and failure, discipline, competition and refereeing. On the other hand, the artist’s home town of Nysa, which has seen itself serve various functions throughout history, repeatedly demolished and rebuilt—a collage town—has become a natural model for broadly understood montage practices, for forging meaning by juxtaposing differences and, above all, for the careful observation of everything to which another person has devoted their attention and time.
Mętel showed his first solo exhibition Anestetyki in a rented doctor’s office at the NZOZ Plac Kolegiacki clinic in Poznań. Since then, he has had more than a dozen solo exhibitions in e.g. Warsaw, Opole, Gdańsk and Poznań. It was at the Rodriguez Gallery in the latter city that he defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Montaż. The artist has also participated in collective shows in Poland and Czechia.
