Konrad Smoleński works the fields of photography, video art, installation, performance and happening. He is one of the pillars of the Panerstwo group based in Poznan and an animator of the alternative music scene Pink Punk. Smolenski often makes use of spectacular pyrotechnic effects, in contrast minimal with the usually minimal punk aesthetic. A fine, chiselled precision is typical of his works, and this quality that gives them the purified, ascetic character. The artist has also experimented with music production through ‘Sound Booming’, guerrilla concerts by the group BNNT. Konrad Smolenski’s practice brims with surprising objects, such as bombs made out of gymnastic balls, or music instruments constructed from military missiles. Such objects are marked with his intervention (being shot through or burnt, for example) and enter into dialogue with the concept of the ready-mades. A sense of anxiety can be found under the aesthetic layer of Smolenski’s works, drawing the most fundamental questions about fear, death and the ultimate.


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Konrad Smolenski is a multimedia artist, who expertly uses film, music, performance, and object. Irrespective of the chosen technique or a combination of them, the artist displays an above-average knowledge of the tricks of trade of each medium, an ability that has been known as artistry. Technical perfection of Smolenski’s works comes as a surprise taking into consideration the subjects he takes on and the conspicuous presence of the vibrant and openly anarchist personality of the author, who is not so much an implicit trace but the cornerstone of this oeuvre. Hypnotic movie stills and their virtuoso editing as well as soundtracks of powerful impact, painlessly introduce the viewer into an alternative field of perception, designed by Smolenski to ultimately destroy the viewer and confront him with the borderline experience of the brutally inevitable, such as decay or death. In spite of their uncompromising attitude, their display of ultimate subjects and a regular use of very intrusive forms, Smolenski’s works are balanced off by subtlety, with and unbounded liberty.
( via 18thstrArtCenter )