Mikolaj Smoczynski, born in Lodz in 1955, is one of the most distinguished artists of his generation and has exhibited in Poland’s most important museums and galleries. He has received little attention outside of Poland. In 1991 he worked as an Artist in Residence in San Diego/ California, in 1994 in France. In 1992 he received the second prize of the “European Photography Award” in Berlin.
Smoczynski works with photography and space-related installations. Both media have a reciprocal influence on each other. The common point of intersection is light, or the process of bringing something to light, of making it perceptible. Smoczynski studied painting in Lublin and Warsaw in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Reflections on the image led him first to object-like canvases and then to an examination of the wall and the room. He removed images from the walls, creating spaces that exposed the viewer to a haunting transference of interior and exterior perceptions. In his most recent work, Smoczynski increasingly constructs architectural spaces within spaces that appear extremely hermetic, like a resonating chamber of existence devoid of any conceit. In his black and white photographs, he erases the boundaries between the reproduction of his installation and a projection of pictorial views.
Mikolaj Smoczynski will shift the floor and ceiling planes of the exhibition space in the ifa Gallery, releasing a section of the history of the place.