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Tomasz Wlaźlak, born on 24th April 1982 in Gorzów Wielkopolski, where he graduated from Secondary State of Fine Arts, later he continued his artistic education in Zielona Góra, Poznań and Toruń, where he received his M.A. At the moment he works at the Fine Arts Faculty at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.
I look at the selection of subjects, which Tomasz Wlaźlak has engaged in and presented to the public for quite a while now. I look and think about it all for slightly longer than statistic three minutes dedicated by majority to commune with visual arts in the shrines of culture of the Piast Kołodziej's Land, and as an involuntary smile starts wandering around my face as time passes by, and the more I enyoy what I see here before my eyes, the only reflection coming to my mind, is the one that can be neatly formed in a single-word Polish phrase: "O.JA.JE.BIE' (what can be loosely translated as "O HOLY FUCK")
For long have I not seen works which I would be equally delighted to review in a character that I am about to do so.
Tomek in his work is both brilliantly grotesque and adorably child-like. With a grace of a pensioner prima ballerina, he plays with photoplates, charmingly using a Low Brow manner for makieng biting remarks on a surrounding world. the centre of his interests being the post-alalogue culture, he mostly employs electronic and electrical media (not only though, the proof of that being his rather unpleasant endeavour with so called classical techniques...), Wlaźlak constructs messages as schoolboyish as sentimental. In fairness though, one may reckon that he strode towards trendy hipsterism, but even if there is a grain of truth in that, in the end it is worth forgiving.
While playing with viewer's emotions in an almost tabloidish manner, Tomek,s productions are as disturbingly honest and accurate as engaging on a very primal level. All of that builds up to a cohesive Universum of a non-pompous narration.
This lack of exaltation combined with charming visual primitivism is the most disarming in Tomasz's entire work. Well maybe aside of his "self portrait", which is simply shit, however I do believe that this is just expection that proves the rule of artist's general splendid condition. Perhaps he commited the given piece while shitfaced of hungover something tike that... Chances are, he came from the view that every artist is entitled, or even obliged to commit one piece that is so fundamentally horrible and wrong that will provide the author with lifelong feeling of shame and regret... dunno. Anyway, it is the only massive kick I came across while drafting this short note. the reasons to mention it are two-fold. First: it will be so much more mean, not to mention funny to do so, and second: it actually brings more to the text.
A kaleidoscope of Tomek Wlaźlak's works presented here, neatly sums up all those years of his struggle with matter, completed thanks to his psychopath stubborness, and in results of which I had an honour to dig to. To enrich the final stage of this journey through Wlaźlak's works I wolud strongly recommend putting on one of Atari Teenage Riot records (slowed down 25%) or a Deep Throat Soundtrack.
Piotr Bujak, Cracow, September 2015
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