Ryszard Waśko

Multimedia artist, curator, organizer of artistic activities. He is the author of films, videos, paintings, drawings, photographs, collages, objects and installations. In the years 1970-1974 he studied at the Cinematography Department at the National Film, Television and Theater School in Łódź, where he then worked until 1983. In 2004-2005 he lectured at the Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg. In 1990-1992 he was the program director of the P.S.1 Museum in New York (now P.S.1 Institute of Contemporary Art, branch of the Museum Of Modern Art). In the years 1997-1999 he chaired the Internationales Künstler Gremium based in Cologne.

In the 1970s, he was a member of the Film Form Workshop, an avant-garde collective of painters, filmmakers, critics, poets, philosophers and scientists dealing with experimental film and multimedia.

In 1981 in Łódź, he initiated and curated the first edition of the international project Construction in Process, which was continued in subsequent years in various parts of the world: in Munich (1985), Łódź (1990, 1993), on empty Negev in Israel (1995), in Melbourne (1998), in Bydgoszcz and on the Piast Trail (2000). In 1990, he co-founded the Artists’ Museum in Łódź, which developed an extensive structure of departments operating in various regions of the world. The museum has organized over 60 international events, exhibitions, meetings, panels, concerts, lectures and projects on contemporary culture. He was the initiator and co-creator of the international exhibition Łódź Biennale (2004).

From 1983 he lived in Berlin, where he received the DAAD scholarship, in 1989 he returned to Poland for a few years, since 1996 he has been living and working in Berlin.