THE SUNDAY PAINTER. Piotr Lakomy Press

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1 Piotr Lakomy Press

2 Artforum May 2017 PIOTR ŁAKOMY IN 2014, I organized an exhibition of my work, Tomorrow Will Be Smaller, in collaboration with the directors of Stereo Gallery. Back then they were looking for a new exhibition space. The House of Polish Words, a former printing factory, had been made available to us as a temporary venue. The building housed a number of presses during the era of the Polish People s Republic. Since the early 1950s, it had produced the best-known newspapers in the country. At the grand opening, in July 1950, Prime Minister Jósef Cyrankiewicz said, A great industrial facility arrives in Warsaw, one of the largest in Europe. A new stronghold from which, like bullets, millions of books and publications will be thrown, establishing knowledge about life and bombarding the trenches of darkness and backwardness. In November of the same year, in a specially adapted production hall in the building, the Second World Congress of the Supporters of Peace convened. Now this historic building in the center of Warsaw is deserted and decaying. During my first visit, in one of the main halls, I came across large-scale graffiti reading we are carrying a bomb for you, which had been shown in a Polish hip-hop video. I chose one of the two entrance halls for my show. It was a sunny space with tall dark-blue pillars and a central spiral staircase. All of the works that I prepared for the exhibition could be called lamps. Some emitted light; others were built from the old frames of fluorescent ceiling fixtures. Each work measured seventy-two inches, about the height of the average man. The entrance hall during the day was sunlit. In the evening the works were the only source of light in the space; they lit up one another. In the center, at the bottom of the staircase, I installed a lamp with an engine. It performed a full rotation every minute, measuring time. PIOTR ŁAKOMY IS AN ARTIST BASED IN WARSAW. View of Piotr Łakomy: Tomorrow Will Be Smaller, 2014, House of Polish Words, Warsaw. 270 ARTFORUM MAY

3 Piotr Łakomy Frieze R E V I E W S E P Piotr Łakomy Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, Poland B Y K R Z Y S Z T O F K O Ś C I U C Z U K There is a room at Galeria Labirynt that, with its hangar-like ceiling, could accommodate a light aircraft, but amidst the constellation of objects that make up Piotr Łakomy s solo exhibition, a di erent interior is conjured: an abode, yet not one you would like to live in. Appropriately titled Pale House, the show brings together a number of works the majority made for this exhibition that weave an uncanny narrative that is simultaneously familiar and disconcerting. A pair of white, wooden double-doors (Untitled, all works 2017) are mounted on the wall but remain shut, the knob missing. They are salvaged, as evidenced by layers of aky paint, but are meticulously cut and set with fragments of an ostrich egg, sliced into sections with equal precision. On the adjacent wall is another door (also Untitled): an ashen shape of mass-produced aluminium that the artist has subjected to several artistic procedures including brute, physical force. Next to it is another frame. This one, for a window, is less mangled, partially overlaid with steel mesh and half of an ostrich egg, its tip sawed o, resembling an eyeball or a CCTV 1/5

4 Piotr Łakomy Frieze camera (Eye nor Window). Accordingly, the more time one spends examining Łakomy s objects, the stronger the agitated feeling of being observed by the absent occupant of this home becomes. On the other side of the room is a geometrical shape resembling the frame of a model kit or the oor-plan of an apartment. Titled Double Bedroom, the structure comprises cut and sewn plastic body-bags that, again, support two ostrich eggs. (If this is the kind of thing that our elusive residents want hung on their wall, it is high time we take our leave.) Piotr Łakomy, Eye nor Window, 2017, 183 x 113 x 25 cm, aluminium door frame, aluminum honeycomb, ostrich egg. Courtesy: Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, Poland On a nearby wall is a funnel-shaped object, Untitled, its aluminium honeycomb mouth home to a cluster of quail eggs, its exterior made up of wrapped fragments of an old sweatshirt that has been soaked in white plaster. On the oor in the middle of the room is what might be a pair of legs missing their feet again, a combination of aluminium core partially covered with plaster-dipped garments. This interplay between what is 2/5

5 Piotr Łakomy Frieze outside and inside, fragile and sturdy, natural and mass-produced, animate and inanimate (and perhaps alive and dead), permeates much of Łakomy s recent work. The aluminium honeycomb core best embodies this. Borrowing their form and name from natural structures found in beehives, the aluminium sheets woven of hexagonal cells make for a highly resistant material with uses ranging from entertainment, to housing and aerospace industry. At the same time, the actual substance found inside natural honeycomb is one of the few known food stu s with an unlimited shelf life. The artist teases out these analogies by drawing industrial aluminium into the realm of the animate, giving it anthropomorphic form, often mirroring parts of his own body. Advertisement < Piotr Łakomy, Untitled, 2017, 75 x 50 x 25 cm, aluminum honeycomb, fabric (sweatshirt), plaster, quail eggs. Courtesy: Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, Poland 3/5

6 THE Piotr Łakomy Frieze Since early 2012, when I rst encountered Łakomy s work, his practice has shifted from geometrical, almost elegant (though never completely so) objects, towards roughly hewn sculptures, but his interests remain unchanged. Pale House is stocked with fragile eggshells, surprisingly durable enough to cut into slices, casts of body parts assembled from high-resistance materials, as well as doors and windows that are meant to o er a safe haven from (or access to) the outside world, but are laid bare to expose their fragility. It o ers an insight into a concise yet highly productive vocabulary of means and materials, replete with parallels and contradictions. And it is by using said vocabulary that Łakomy investigates the links between architecture and the body skin being its primary shelter. Only on my way back to Warsaw did I realised that the Pale House has no occupant it never has; it never will. Rather, it dwells in the minds of each and every one who visits. 4/5

7 Piotr Łakomy Frieze Main image: Piotr Łakomy, Untitled, 2017, 27 x 113 x 65 cm, wooden door, aluminum honeycomb, ostrich eggs. Courtesy: Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, Poland K R Z YS Z TO F KO Ś C I U C Z U K Krzysztof Ko ciuczuk is a writer and contributing editor of frieze. He lives in Warsaw. T W I T TF AE RC E BE MO AO IK PL I N T E R E S T T O P I O T R L A K O M Y K R Z Y S Z T O F K O S C I U C Z U K L U B L I N P O L A N D G A L E R I A L A B I R Y N T London 1 Montclare Street London E2 7EU, UK +44 (0) New York 247 Centre St 5th Floor New York, NY Berlin Zehdenicker Str. 28 D Berlin Germany /5

8 Published 08/11/2016 Piotr Lakomy: Room Temperature For his latest instalment at the south London gallery The Sunday Painter, the Polish artist poses questions about our relationship to the objects, architecture and nature that surround us The Sunday Painter, London 30 September 5 November 2016 by ALEXANDER GLOVER As you walk up the stairs of The Sunday Painter, a gallery in Peckham, south London, you are confronted by a large pole-like structure suspended from the ceiling. It s called Untitled (Tailbone) or (Coccyx) (2015) and consists of aluminium honeycomb, insulation foam and fabric. There is a feeling of uneasiness about its placement, but whether that is about the placement of the object, or the viewer in relation to it, remains up in the air figuratively and literally. The Polish artist Piotr Lakomy (b1983), who lives and works in Poznan, has consistently focused on the human relationship to the object, as well as physical space and environment. Untitled (Tailbone) or (Coccyx) acts as a stark introductory reminder of his preoccupation with such topics. But there is more being suggested here. Many artists find it slightly frustrating when critics or viewers place too much importance on the material or medium of the work. This is obviously circumstantial based on the work and the artist. In the case of Untitled (Tailbone) or (Coccyx) and the other works featured in Room Temperature, the material simply cannot be ignored. The aluminium honeycomb that Lakomy uses may appear weathered and old, but is an incredibly modern material, used in the aerospace, construction, architecture, energy and rail industries. It is essentially a material that forms the fabric of many important global industries. And yet Lakomy has moulded and presented it in a way that gives the impression of a natural object, created, perhaps, by creatures such as bees. This juxtaposition between what is man-made and what is natural permeates the exhibition. Similar to Untitled (Tailbone) or (Coccyx) is Untitled (Nest) (2016), arguably the centrepiece of the show. Instead of being suspended above the staircase, this work is hung in the middle of the gallery and dominates the attention in the room. This work is also made from aluminium honeycomb and fabric, but is smeared in beeswax, developing and deepening the nature/man-made juxtaposition. For some viewers, it may be difficult to find the humanity in these works, but it is not hard to find if you look closely. The structure of Untitled (Nest), for example, once contained a human body (possibly Lakomy himself), with the head supported on an outstretched arm. It is not obvious that a human body was in it, as there are no noticeable human-shaped inflections, on the sculpture, but there is certainly a sense of human presence despite physical absence. When I visited, this feeling was exacerbated when a bluebottle flew around the

9 work, as though something previously alive was in the process of decomposing within the structure. Lakomy would probably welcome this reading, as it illustrates how he wanted the works in this show to engage not just with the audience, but with the natural environment in which they are placed. Once you move away from the confines of the main gallery area, signs point the visitor outside, down a back alley, to Untitled (Airhouse) or (Windhouse) (2016) a work comprising a body bag and ostrich eggs. Again, there are juxtaposing materials: on the one hand, the body bag usually contains an organism at the end of its life; on the other, the white eggshells once housed an organism at the beginning of its life. It just goes to show that life and death really are around the corner. Piotr Lakomy: Room Temperature, installation view, The Sunday Painter, London.

10 Piotr Lakomy. Untitled (Nest), Aluminium on honeycomb, fabric (T-shirts), beeswax, 240 x 60 x 30 cm. THE

11 THE Piotr Lakomy. Untitled (Nest), 2016 (detail). Aluminium on honeycomb, fabric (T-shirts), beeswax, 240 x 60 x 30 cm.

12 Piotr Lakomy. Untitled (Tailbone) or (Coccyx), Aluminium on honeycomb, insulation foam, fabric, 183 x 8 cm. THE

13 Piotr Lakomy: Room Temperature, installation view, The Sunday Painter, London. Piotr Lakomy. Untitled, Body bag, insulation foam, beeswax, 183 x 100 cm.

14 THE Piotr Lakomy. Untitled, Bamboo, aluminium honeycomb, beeswax, 183 x 8 cm. Piotr Lakomy. Untitled (Airhouse) or (Windhouse), Body bag, ostrich eggs, 250 x 150 cm.

15 This is tomorrow October 2016 Home About Broadcasts Contact Advertise Cities Amsterdam Antwerp Aspen Athens Auckland Barcelona Bath Belgium Bergen Berlin Bilbao Birmingham Bonington Gallery Bonn Boston Bregenz Brighton Brisbane Bristol Brussels Cambridge Cardiff Chicago Colchester cologne Colorado Copenhagen Coventry Dubai Dublin Dusseldorf Edinburgh Espoo Film Frankfurt geneva Gent Contemporary Art Magazine The Sunday Painter, Blenheim Grove, London SE15 4QL Piotr Lakomy: Room Temperature Title : Room Temperature installation view, The Sunday Painter, London, 2016 Website : Credit : Images courtesy of the artist and The Sunday Painter, photography by Ollie Hammick. Search Go Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD

16 Seville Shanghai Singapore Solo Sound Southend-on-Sea Spånga St. Moritz Stockholm Stoke-on-Trent Text The Hague Tokyo Toronto Vancouver Venice Video Vienna Vilnius zurich Medium Animation Architecture Beijing Broadcasting Ceramics Choreography Collage Computer Curation Digital Drawing Film Group ink Installation Landscape Mixed Media New Media Painting Performance photo Photography Pottery Print Printmaking TWITTER FACEBOOK PINTEREST Piotr Lakomy: Room Temperature The Sunday Painter 30 September - 5 November 2016 Review by Joseph Constable The title of Piotr Lakomy s exhibition at The Sunday Painter Room Temperature prefaces the human body as both a starting point and remnant of its display. A comfortable ambience of twenty degrees centigrade is at odds with the body s thirtyseven, and it is this tension between comfort and discomfort, absence and presence, which lingers in the air. What is particularly distinctive is Lakomy s unique response to and activation of The Sunday Painter s architecture. The exhibition extends beyond the white walls of the designated gallery space into the corridors, beams and exterior spaces, which sets up a conversation between centre and periphery. Lakomy s response to space is from a position of subtle disruption and reconfiguration. For example Untitled (Nest) (2016) is a nest made of aluminium mesh insulation and coated with beeswax that hangs precariously from the beam of the gallery. Its form and material is embedded with both life and death, as the life force of the beeswax on its exterior is undermined by the absence of a living body inside. A second body bag hangs in the bricked arch, this one white in colour, with insulation foam and more beeswax. Its offset positioning next to an Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD

17 Projection Publication Sculpture Solo Sound technology Text Textile Textiles Video Virtual Reality Watercolour Show abstract abstraction Anri Sala Art Fair Art Prize Artist Interview Artist Profile Biennale Camden Arts Centre Catherine Clark Gallery Dana Schutz DRAF Festival Fierce Festival Frieze projects Group Installation Jerwood Visual Arts Painting photorealism photorealist Print Solo Sound technology Two-person Archive Nov 2017 Oct 2017 Sep 2017 empty power socket is an ironic intimation of a superfluous life source, as the protruded wiring reaches through the fabric of this minimalist composition. The preoccupation with human comfort is also related to the ergonomic forms that these two works take. On the wall outside is the fragmented frame of another body bag; its centre has been removed and its flimsy remains rest gently on a pair of ostrich eggs. There is something inherently cyclical about this relationship to comfort, the liquid warmth of a fertilised egg compared to the artificially fabricated shroud of a body bag. Again, Lakomy does not appear to resolve this binary but leaves both together hanging in the air. A more cylindrical structure is positioned on the roof: a thin column made from bamboo, aluminium, honeycomb and beeswax. Here, the dense pattering of hexagonal wax cells suggests the networked constellation of living producers, and yet the reality is just surface; the sculpture is manmade. This work, together with a similar column that is inverted and hung downwards on the staircase, speaks of structures, patterns and formations that exist in both nature and industry. The fact that Lakomy s process involves significant labour over his materials stretching, compressing, melting and dissolving is paradoxically countered by the sense of absence that pervades each work. A series of paintings hang in the gallery, their empty fields are segmented and framed by blobs of paint that cling to the surface edges like cultivated bacteria in a petri dish. There is something domestic about these works; although the human body may be absent from the scene, the memory of its presence carries through: growing, developing, and remaining. Published on 28 October 2016 Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD

18 October 2016 Curating The Contemporary Posted by curatingthecontemporaryoctober 17, 2016 The series aims to point out the existing dialogues between art and space, intended as architectonical or geographical and approached as material or relevant context. Architecture and body, Habitat and skin, Materials and corporeality. These are some of the recurring themes suggested in the sculptural works by the polish artist Piotr Lakomy, now exhibiting at The Sunday Painter Gallery, in Peckham. His work engages with the idea of skin, seen as the rst architectonic structure in which the body is contained, and develops using the physical properties of other materials, re ecting on human connections within its surroundings. In his new solo show, Room Temperature, the artist extends the connection with architecture to the space itself, working across all aspects of the gallery s structure and creating a eerie environment of bodily structures. He approaches bodies habitats using organic and industrial materials in the gallery space, which in turn becomes an organism and a living body itself. Beeswax, ostrich eggs, body bags, foam, aerospace materials and clothes are assembled in anthropomorphic sculptures that contrast with rectangular-shaped wall works. Fluidity and rigidity coexist in a context whereby the choice of materials, the forms and the use of the space all carefully contribute to the idea of inhabiting. Home

19 On entering the space, a suspended cylindrical sculpture appears on the stair. It is a foamy, grey, juicy, spinal form; a protuberant and stalactitic introduction to a quasi-organic environment. In the main gallery, another sculpture made of aluminium honeycomb, fabric and beeswax hangs from the ceiling. It is a structure that once encased the body of the artist and now, through its skinlike qualities and form, uncannily preserves a capsular character. A cocoon-like atmosphere envelops the room; the effect is given by a layer of Vaseline, which covers the windows and, consequently, transforms the external light in to a milky shadow that raises the feeling of being inside something. And the same idea is ampli ed by the glimpse of the back of another painting installed outside one window, which materialises through the nacreous layer. Positioned on the walls, there are three tactile rectangular paintings made of aerospace materials, foam and ostrich eggs, whose measurements follow Le Corbusier s The Modulor. The overall effect they give is of a layered beehive-like structure; all three paintings have a rigid format but, according to the particular character of the deformation effected by compression or stretching, different kinds of movement are suggested. Then, in one corner, a smaller painting quietly augments the cocoon-like ambience through its soft and tactile quality, which is given by the re-elaboration of a jacket. The show continues at the ground oor, using the rear side of the gallery plus the roof terrace and the experience of walking through a disorientating and intricately organic space is thus reinforced. A work made with body bags is displayed in the archway at the back of the gallery, which is being used for the rst time as part of a show. A curved zip runs across the rectangular painting, mirroring the contour of the archway, and the low temperature of the space creates a sympathetic connection with the material used, inducing the feeling of inhabiting a body bag; the last container. Finally, a last work inhabits the roof terrace; it is another cylindrical sculpture made of bamboo, aluminium honeycomb and beeswax that stands proudly in the landscape, blending with the other vertical elements of the roof. Its spinal appearance recalls the rst sculpture of the show and completes the experiencing of a coherent and rich body of works. Caterina Avataneo Room Temperature is showing at The Sunday Painter Gallery until 5 th November. For more information please click here (

20 January 2016 Mousse Piotr akomy Piotr akomy creates installations remaining in dialogue with architecture, that reacts to the present space, relating it to the scale of the human body. Using these proportions he creates a kind of painterly landscape in which human left traces of his presence. By bringing the anthropometric factor akomy allows the spectator to set against the object, both literally and metaphorically. A key role in his works is played by the used materials, their origin and physical properties. Equally important is the social context in which these materials are functioning in everyday life the nature of the relationship they establish between humans and their surroundings, environment, earth and the sky. Arranging space akomy often operates with light and its sources. He uses and interprets it in different ways: as an energy carrier, information about space and architecture, as well as a testimony of time, expressed in the transience of the technology available to us.. at SpazioA, Pistoia until 23 January 2016

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22 September, 2015 Contemporary Lynx U a FIVE YOUNG CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS TO WATCH Sep 22, 2015 Piotr Lakomy, photo Maciej Landsberg Piotr akomy (b. 1983) is a visual artist, informed by the minimalist tradition and testing the limits of painting, who makes installations reacting to extant architecture. His work re ects a critical attitude to reality, to data glut, to the materials and technologies that surround us. Using motionsensitive materials and lighting, he triggers the emergence of site- and time-speci c spatial arrangements/compositions, introducing the viewer to the process. The featured installation by Piotr akomy combines the artist s theoretical and formal investigations to date. It was inspired by the Endless House, a fundamental design by architect Frederick Kiesler and an idea of interaction between man, the environment and technology. akomy s installation refers to Kiesler s concept of perceiving architecture as a human organism. The tent-lamp has been made of a lightsensitive fabric, through which can be seen a pulsating light imitating the rhythm of human breathing. Appearing in many of the artist s works, light becomes here an element that builds and de nes architecture. The tent s form alludes to the other objects (vest, life jacket, coverings) and to the idea of building protective housings for body parts using contemporary materials.

23 May, 2015 Art Net 10 Exceptional Millennial Artists to Watch Who will be the next market darling? Piotr Lakomy, Need Room (2013). Photo: courtesy of the Sunday Painter. 5. Piotr Lakomy (b. 1983) Polish artist Piotr Lakomy s minimalist steel works construct new images of architecture and the urban environment. In spite of its austere aesthetic, Lakomy s work remains light and intimate. For example, Need Room is a styrofoam sculpture nestled in a corner and shaped like a granite Rubik s Cube missing a piece. Three small light bulbs occupy the missing piece, placed as if in conversation. The Poznan-based artist, who was spotted at London-based gallery The Sunday Painter ( s booth at Art Basel in Miami last year, was recently featured in a group show in the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw and is currently in a two-person show at Hester ( (see NADA Art Fair Is the Most Fun You ll Have In Miami (