Andrzej Nowicki
Andrzej Nowicki makes paintings and drawings that create parallel universes where people and objects multiply and metamorphose into ever more strange visions. His disquieting dreamlike tableaux combine the seductive allure of a fairy tales with the perverse playfulness of Surrealism and the insight of speculative fiction to create disordered narratives that hold several tensions in balance: between old and new, centre and periphery, East and West, sense and non-sense, logic and absurdity, beauty and grotesquery.
Born (1981) in Kielce in Poland, before moving to South Africa in 1989, his work frequently deals with transit and transience, often containing undercurrents that highlight the double side of globalisation – the glamour, speed and consumption of travel and technology but also the detritus and architectural scarring that it leaves behind. While he frequently depicts scenes from his hometown of Kielce, the spaces he creates have a generic quality, and yet they look strangely familiar: non-places where one gets the eerie feeling that not only that a crime has been committed, but also that its secrets are so deeply buried they can only be imagined.
Selected Exhibitions
* Sleep Depot - Solo show at David Krut Projects, Johannesburg (2008)
* The Gloaming - Solo show at Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Woodstock, Cape Town (2007)
* Untitled - Group show at Whatiftheworld, Cape Town (2006)
* All Creatures Great and Small - Group show at Whatiftheworld, Cape Town (2006)
* Glimpse - Group show at Centre for African Studies Gallery, University of Cape Town (2006)
* Not yet famous presents Nobody Likes Nothing - Group show at Whatiftheworld, Cape Town (2006)
* Absolut Finale - Group show at the Association for Visual Arts, Cape Town (2005)
* Graduate Exhibition - Group Exhibition at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (2004)
* Black Box - Group show at Centre for African Studies Gallery, University of Cape Town (2003)
Awards
- Irma Stern Scholarship (2004)
- Judy Steinberg Award (2004)
