Marek Dariusz Kamienski (b. 1953), "Venus of Ille," 1991

Biography
Marek Kamienski (born 1953) Painter, draughtsman, author of films, installations and performances, one of the main representatives of the "new expression" painting of the 1980s, vocalist and producer of the band Zilch (Jarocin 1984-1985), was born in Katowice. From 1972-1979 he studied at the local branch of the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Graphic Arts, after which he joined the art trend of the 1980s with his irony-laden and strongly erotic large-format painting combined with photography. The artist's first solo exhibition took place in 1983 at the BWA in Katowice. Using photographs from illustrated and pornographic magazines, he combined pop art styling with almost "wildly" applied paint on canvas (Motorhead, 1982). He also did not shy away from playful, fantastic visions, such as highly charged expressions, monstrously enlarged plush toys, quotations from Jan Matejko's paintings or fanciful creatures (Dinosaurs, 1985). Since then, he has collected and combined motifs freely, mixing elements of high and plebeian culture with icons of European art. At the end of the 1980s, he moves away from "wild" painting in favor of postmodern play with various conventions. He refers to Futurist stylistics (Socrates Dancing, Breakfast on the Grass, 1991), and in the following years to the classics of painting by travestying and quoting, mixing and paraphrasing various well-known themes of painting. His narrative, multi-faceted and multi-plane way of creating motifs on canvas continues to this day. His current works (Vincent and Paul Go to Motif, 2009), solidly refined, even decorative, exude a fever of sharp colors, flatly constructed picture space, condensed narrative but also unconventional clusters of thought, not shying away from pastiche.

Great Encyclopedia of Polish Painting, foreword, Jan. K. Ostrowski, Kluszczyński Publishing House, Krakow 2011