MICHAŁ SMANDEK

(b. 1981)
He works as an assistant professor in the Sculpture Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. He earned his PhD at the Faculty of Sculpture and Spatial Activities at the University of the Arts in Poznań. He is a holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage scholarship, two-time holder of the Marshal of the Silesian Voivodeship scholarship, winner of the ShowOff section of the Photomonth in Krakow. He carried out projects during the Bangla Biennale and the 1st International Land Art Symposium in India as well as the 3rd LAM 360° Land Art Biennale in Mongolia. He is represented by the Rodríguez Gallery.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Michał Smandek likes traveling around the world. He is interested in remote open spaces, other people and their habits. Whenever possible, he stays in a tent. He turned its folding and unfolding into an art project. He is keen on inviting local people he meets to co-create his works, even if they do not speak the language he understands. He sees in nature a perfection that he amicably appropriates and names. He carves dry sticks in the woods, worrying about trees, he observes plants scratching the sand, sticks smoke to volcanoes, modifies salt cones and cuts open the smooth surfaces of the desert. In the studio, he forges steel in the furnace of the forge, bends sheet metal and stretches steel ropes, looking for those forces and relationships that he observed in nature. Recently, he has been producing sounds from metal – sounds which are commentaries from literature.