The Obrraz 2 exhibition at the National Museum in Szczecin is the second, after the National Museum in Lublin, collective exhibition of the artistic group called Obrraz (its name is a  Polish word for 'Picturre').

The group is composed of Krzysztof Gliszczyński, Łukasz Huculak, Tomasz Zawadzki, Sławomir Marzec, Lech Twardowski and Tomasz Zawadzki, brings together artists whose starting point is... a picture..

This seemingly obvious statement, however, is intended to emphasise that the picture is usually the goal, and not, as in the case of this exhibition, the point of departure. The natural attitude towards the picture is the superiority of the world created by the artist, for whom the picture is the medium. Instead, the paintings presented at the National Museum in Szczecin are objects created out of reflection and manipulation of the object called a picture. As a certain material and three-dimensional entity, it is ostensibly well-tamed in culture.  But for centuries it has been used as a medium for something else, as a 'window on the world', a veil for something inexpressible, a symbol of something that is revealed in it. Meanwhile, it is itself enigmatic as an object. It itself provokes actions that show it as a source of artistic process.

Lech Karwowski

Krzysztof Gliszczyński – in his creative work, he uses the element of layering as a process of changing the essence of a thing into a specific form, which he recovers by separating it by means of a cut from a compact surface. Short cuts in the form of gouging reveal what lies beneath and the recovered material, separated from the surface, is reused. The artist captures the self-propelled power of painting through the form contained in the painting and in the objects that accompany the whole process. The artist subjects painting to all manner of processes of release and emergence from controlled chaos.

Krzysztof Gliszczyński was born in 1962.  He obtained a diploma from the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Gdańsk (now the Academy of Art) in 1987. He received the title of professor in 2011. He currently works in painting, drawing, object and creates video works. He has also received scholarships from the DAAD in Worpswede in 1992, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in New York in 2000, the City of Sopot, the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodship and ZAIKS in Warsaw. To date, he has received the following awards: Bielska Jesień '93, Painting Festival in Szczecin '96 and the 3rd Pomeranian Art Triennale at PGS in Sopot in 2017.

Łukasz Huculak – this author is the only member of this group who seems to start from the painting as a window onto what is visible, albeit transformed by the painting itself. That is, from the painting as illusion. His most recent works, however, reveal the 'spatial' potential of a colour-uniform plane. Theoretically flat, it is at the same time an indefinite depth, a shadow in whose boundlessness the eye is lost. Starting initially from the world of objects in a metaphysically generalised depth, he arrives at the boundlessness of macro- or micro-space, in which the gaze is lost, in which indeterminate biomorphs slowly rotate, like quantum fluctuations.

Łukasz Huculak was born in 1977. He has received scholarships from the Minister of Culture, the Government of Bavaria and has been awarded prizes at the Szczecin Painting Festival and the Bielska Jesień Painting Festival. He currently runs a painting studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław. He is a curator and publishes texts on art. He is also a member of the Wrocław Academy for Young Scientists and Artists and the editorial committee of the Silesian Art Yearbooks. He authored exhibitions on corporeality and mortality (Late Symptoms of Death, Psychopomp, In the Depths of the Image), the natural environment (Heliotropie, Sopra Minerva, Science / Fiction, Aurora, La force des plantes), witchcraft trials (Incantations, Nietota) and historical contexts of modernism (Migrations, Details / Spaces).

Sławomir Marzec – his work focuses on the reflexive experience of visuality, at the level of the emergence of specific forms of attentiveness. It is a kind of practical, experiential hermeneutic postphenomenology. The concept of energy is one of the key words necessary to interpret his work. According to Marzec, art is an ongoing search for the non-objective essence that is the immaterial energy that emanates from the surface of a painting.

Sławomir Marzec was born in 1962 in Lublin. He graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, where he is currently a professor. He practices painting, drawing, installation, processed photography, performance and film. Author of over 100 individual exhibitions (at, among others, MCSW Radom, Foksal Gallery, the National Museum in Lublin, CSW Warsaw, CRP Orońsko). Author of over 250 publications on the borderline of theory and art criticism (long-term reviewer of the New York NYArts and the London Contemporary). He has also published five books, including "Zabobony sztuki (Superstitions of Art)".

Lech Twardowski – His paintings are actually monumental, multi-layered elaborate installations that absorb the surrounding space, which sometimes only look like ordinary paintings. It might be said that they are in fact explosions of energy, the source of which is the contrast between the background and the splattering streaks of paint, if we take into account that the division between the background and 'something in the background' here is purely conventional.

Lech Twardowski was born in 1952. He studied at the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Wrocław (now the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław). In 1983 he departed to Paris; in 1995 he returned to Wrocław. He works in painting, installation and performance. He uses various techniques and media in his work, collaborates with musicians and is interested in theatrical space. His paintings and objects can be found in the collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the National Museum in Warsaw, the National Museum in Wrocław, the collection of the Lower Silesian Zachęta Society for Fine Arts and in private collections in Poland and abroad.

Tomasz Zawadzki – his paintings appear as if they have grown into the exhibition venue.  Whether they have appeared there by revealing layers hidden beneath plaster or paint, or as extensions of frames that once existed in the wall, or as echoes of earlier furnishings and displays.  They excavate their interiors to find previously implemented content in the particular layers. He creates sets of works that are a kind of record of successive stages of experience in the process of the continuous construction of the painting sign.
Tomasz Zawadzki was born in 1956. He lives and works in Lublin and Warsaw. He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Arts of the Maria Skłodowska-Curie University in Lublin. He works in painting, drawing and photography. His works can be found in the collections of, among others: the Museum of Art in Łódź; the National Museum in Lublin; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Radom; the Museum of Chełm Land, Gallery 72 Collection in Chełm; Museum Modern Art Hunfeld (Germany); Gutenberg Museum Mainz (Germany); Studio Art Centre in Warsaw; El Gallery in Elbląg; Labirynt Gallery in Lublin; Lublin Zachęta Society for Fine Arts; Lower Silesia Zachęta Society for Fine Arts.

Curator: Lech Karwowski
Curatoral cooperation: Magdalena Lewoc, Natalia Sara Skorupa