Grzegorz Klaman

Artist and founder of Wyspa in Gdańsk has, since the beginning of his artistic practice in the mid 80s, employed the tension between the body, space/site and the political. He pioneered context-related activities in the country, art in public space as well as activism through establishing independent structures for the production and presentation of contemporary art. Taking both art and activism in the field of cultural, social and political life as one, he works between locally produced knowledges and artistic gestures as well as practices of self-governance. Born in 1959, Klaman is one of the most influential and legendary artists of his generation in Poland, an art teacher and leader of the independent art movement in Gdańsk. Creating with his peers a new art scene from scratch in a city with nearly no avant-garde tradition, he built a solid foundation for the development of innovative and radical artistic positions of art in Gdańsk. He did so via performative utterances, actions and institutive practices that continue until now. His concept on Reversed Archeology (1987) set the foundations for Wyspa's current interest in stimulating cultural and political discourse. Klaman is a professor in the Academy of Fine Arts. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Florida Atlantic University in 2007 where he subsequently had a one-person exhibition at Schmidt Art Center. Recently his works were included/exhibited in Messiahs at Modem in Debrecen, an installation Fear and Trembling and the group-show History of Violence at Haifa Art Museum and Chosen in Digital Art Lab Holon. Earlier group exhibitions include: In-Between, Chicago Cultural Center (2001), Łódź Biennale (2004), Dockwatchers (2005), Over and over again (2009), Political Things, Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdańsk (2010), Crushing in, Nobel Museum (2010) Stockholm