Material Poetics

The main strand of Xawery Wolski’s work focuses on unraveling the capacity of matter to withstand the passage of time. Through his artworks the artist creates traces of such resistance, leaving imprints of what has managed to survive. He gives them the status of relics through which he faces disappearance, vivisection and evanescence. And this confrontation is the main aim of material poetics which he develops in his art.

Xawery Wolski’s exhibition at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko is across-sectional review of his work. Out of his vast oeuvre, we have selected works whose starting point is the body and matter. The relationship between these two elements produces various figures. It may be the artist’s body and the physical effort of shaping clay while making sculptures with the prints of hand and fingers. It could be objects in the form of the human body, its fragment or even particular organs. It may be a tunic – a sort of negative, memory of a body which has passed away. Finally, it might be heavy matter, formed into huge objects – sculptural bodies whose physical presence seems immoveable. The diversity of figures is connected with the diversity of materials, textures and colours: smooth and shiny terracotta, polished bronze, rough steel, soft and warm paper or plant seeds. What makes another element of Xawery Wolski’s material poetics is the diversity of the scale: starting from small objects you can hold in your hand, through sculptures with the size close to the human body, to monumental objects.

The exhibition encompassing several dozen works will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, Orangery Gallery and in the park. It unfolds the tale of a poetic transformation of matter in its resistance against the passage of time.