Archive - 4th Grolsch ArtBoom Festival

WHO

WHAT

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Laksa Kobas

Graduate of the Department of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, director and screenwriter for short film forms (dramatic, documentary, music video and animation). In 1996 he worked with Wojtek Koronkiewicz on his film Fikcyjne pulpety [Fictional Pulpets – a pulpet is a kind of meatball in Polish], which was a parody of Quentin Tarantino’s cult picture Pulp Fiction. A year later he and Cezariusz Andrejczuk made Sceny z użycia, which won the grand prix of the OFF Cinema Poznań Festival in 2001. The artist’s following film projects were Strzały [Shots] and Czy móglbym się u pani wykąpać albo przespać? [Madam, Could I Bathe or Spend the Night at Your Home?] as well as a documentary about a family trip to Licheń, Pojechałem z mamą na pielgrzymkę [I Went on a Pilgrimage with Mother]. For the past six years Laksa has also been working in photo editing. His best-known works are his series of large-format photo collages carefully constructed using digital technology. The first of them, Projekt miejski: Warszawa [Urban Design: Warsaw] was produced between 2003 and 2005, and is a surrealistic vision of a city in the form of tangled streets, huddled skyscrapers, viaducts and industrial equipment. Afterward, in 2006, thanks to an invitation from the Leipzig Parismoskau Gallery, Laksa made his cycle Rauchdelikt, a photographic reinterpretation of the paintings of the well-known Leipzig artist Neo Rauch. Two years later in Poznań, his Memento Vulgari was exhibited – five monumental photomontages by Laksa and Ewa Łowżył displayed in the city centre based on paintings by the famed Renaissance painters Titian, Botticelli, Giorgione, Bruegel and Ghirlandaio. Spaces previously reserved for advertising were used for their presentation, transforming the streets into a gigantic public gallery space. Likewise in 2008, Laksa produced a series of photomontages entitled The Afterlife of Buildings at the exhibition for the Hotel Polonia at the Polish pavilion at the Vienna Biennale, where he received a Golden Lion. The works were visualisations of existing Polish buildings, transformed in the future to serve new functions. He showed the office tower at Warsaw’s Rondo 1 as a supporting column for a road overpass, the basilica in Licheń as a waterpark, and the University Library as a shopping centre. Laksa himself describes his style as “contemporary dark”. Clashing with convention, mixing extremely disparate stylistic resources such as farce and subtle poetry, or fiction and documentary, the artist modifies perceptions of reality. His photomontages are always surprising, augmenting the subjects with new meanings, where they had appeared to already be authoritatively defined.

LikeKonik - presentation

LikeKonik - Cracow Fetish Tour 2010

Kobas Laksa intended to refresh the meaning of one of the best-known symbols of the city of Krakow – the Lajkonik, a folk figure who presently mainly serves as a colourful folk character for tourists. The artist’s goal was to remind the audience of the history of the origin of this folk celebration through the discovery of his contemporary equivalent. The project interjected itself into continuity the age-old tradition of dressing up in the horse-and-rider costume, drawing attention to how much this custom had ceased to have anything in common with history, and so, to the question of whether it is understood or even serves any purpose?

Laksa, in studying the history of this symbol noticed that, despite the approval enjoyed by the custom today, it was once so dangerous for the people of the city that it was banned by city officials. Now it appears to be only a harmless game. After the design of the costume by the famed Polish artist Stanisław Wyspiański, this custom was again welcomed onto Krakow Main Square, but stripped of its former brutal associations. Laksa not only took on tradition, but also the renowned Cracovian artist Wyspiański by designing a modernised version of the Lajkonik’s costume.

“Tradition, too, should be subject to evolution”, says Laksa. “Change is an integral part of its nature, a part of the changing of times and changes in societies. Artificially upholding traditions deprives them of their sense and meaning.” The living objet d’art entitled LikeKonik was a kind of mobile sculpture. Throughout the festival, he had been seen on the weekends on the main square and during the week at the Wyspiański Pavilion at 2 Wszystkich Świętych Square.

Pictures: Weronika Szmuc

Project curator: Marcin Krasny