Artur Zarczynski

You can find me at Greenwich Market sometimes. Check my personal website for update.

Café Gallery (collective)
Southwark Park, London, UK

Café Gallery (collective)
Southwark Park, London, UK

Exhibition of amateur artists in Polish Social And Cultural Association Ltd. (collective)
Hammersmith, London, UK

In my work I focus mainly on the human, in particular the European. I am interested in the current human condition, past achievements and probable future. I am wondering about the aim of the old continent, of that cradle of the contemporary, modern civilisation. Where are the humans that inhabit it going, what are the motives for their deeds and what are the values they cherish? Is it possible to speak about the phenomenon of the European culture in today’s mass world? Are the Roman law, Christian morality and Greek philosophy still values for my contemporaries? Are all those achievements perishing, being washed away and replaced by something that can be called an anti-value and culturlessness? What is today's man relation to God and natural law? Those questions are the starting point for my work. In art, and in particular in sculpture, I am looking for means to answer them.

I make my sculptures of clay, sometimes glaze them, sometimes paint them or leave them as biscuit, depending on the result I want to achieve. I have chosen clay because it is convenient as a material to be worked on and it can be shaped in various ways. It is a wonderful material for conveying almost any idea. I use numerous additives such as plaster, cement and metal, too.

May 2012
HatchedGallery (collective)
Southwark, London, UK

October/November 2011
Unit 24 Gallery (collective)
Southwark, London, UK

August/September 2011
Polish Social And Cultural Association Ltd.(joint)
Hammersmith, London, UK

"...In today's materialist world, not many people remember that our bodies are not everything that we are made of, and that there is always a spirit in all of us, untouchable, invisible, but eternal. Despised for its alleged anti-rationalism, the spiritualist world is now passé and is removed from our social lives.
Even culture and the arts, which used to be so well-versed in spiritual and religious subjects, have turned towards matter. Today's man, who lives longer than ever, forgets that matter has to die some day and that only the soul is eternal in our dualist existence.
According to the anthropology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the leading philosophers of the Church, man is a unity of soul and body. This means, that men should care for both..."

My name is Artur Zarczynski. I was born in Wroclaw in 1981, at the beginning of the last decade of the perishing system, just one month before the introduction of the martial law. I remember those earnest, anxious faces of generals gaping from the TV screen. They were lunatic sleepwalkers striving to fulfil their nihilistic dreams. However, that small, bizarre world evolved. Communism collapsed before I was ten so now I can live and create wherever I want. I chose London, the city full of energy, majesty, tradition, contrasts, passion and hatred, to be the beginning of my journey.