Jarosław Kozłowski

Born in 1945 in Srem. In the years 1963-1969, he studied painting at the State Graduate School of Visual Arts in Poznań (today the University of Arts in Poznań), where he has also taught (paiting and drawing) since 1967 till 2019. In the years 1981-1987, he served as the academy`s rector. He has also taught at Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo (1992-1997), Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunste in Amsterdam (1992-2004), Academy Without Walls in Lusaca ( 1999, 2001),and at the Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2005-2010). He is currently professor at the University of Arts in Poznań. In 1971, he initiated the NET project- an international artistic exchange. Between 1972-90, he founded and then ran the Akumulatory Gallery in Poznań, which presented the work of Polish and international avant-garde artists. In 1991-1993, he was programming curator of the gallery and collection of the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. Fellowships with The British Council in London (1979) and DAAD Berlin (1984-85). He lives and works in Poznań.

One of the leading conceptual artists. He initiated the international artistic network NET (1971) and took part in the artistic movement Fluxus. During the 60s and the 70s, considered one of the most consequential conceptualists Kozłowski has engaged in analytical reflection and linguistic studies as well as performance art. In the early works his investigations concerned art itself and, especially, its language. He regarded the transparency of language – and its fit with the reality depicted or described – with suspicion. In the following decades, these analytical reflections, never abandoned, were to acquire a progressively critical dimension. The artist developed the language theme throughout the 70s; in books, cycles of drawings and in photographs, such as those presented at the exhibition Facts (1976) and in the documentation for Exercises in Semiotics (1977). During the 80s, the artist began to create large-scope installations, in which he took on board criticism of how art functions in society, among others, series of works devoted to de-mythologising art. During the 90s, and until the present time, Kozłowski has been the author of a number of spectacular installations, in which he deals with the problems of modernist traditions and the social and political context of art.