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 Solo Exhibitions
2009
Altona, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
2008
Sleep Depot, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg
2007
The Gloaming, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009
Crocodile Tears, Parlour, Brooklyn, New York
2008/2009
http://http://www.whatiftheworld.com/exhibitions/2008/12/03/big-wednesday/”>Big Wednesday, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
2007
Come, Michaelis School of Fine Art Gallery, Cape Town
2006
Not Yet Famous: Nobody Likes Nothing, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
All Creatures Great and Small, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
Glimpse, Centre for African Studies Gallery, University of Cape Town
2005
Absolute Finale, the Association for Visual Arts, Cape Town
2004
Graduate Exhibition, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town
2003
Black Box, Centre for African Studies Gallery, University of Cape Town
Awards
Irma Stern Scholarship (2004)
Judy Steinberg Award (2004)
Residencies
2009 Printmaking at David Krut Projects, Johannesburg
