Krzysztof Zarębski

Born in Warsaw, 1939. Between 1962 and 1968 he studied Painting and Graphic Art under Prof Jan Wodyński and Prof Stefan Gierowski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, from which he graduated with honours in 1968. Since 1981 he has lived and worked in New York. Upon arrival in the United States he joined The Rivington School, a New York-based group of artists. Krzysztof Zarębski is a pioneer of performance art in Poland. His works regularly revolve around the themes of passing time, biological processes, memory and eroticism. After graduating from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts he painted paintings in the style of "new figuration", which was a fashionable trend at that time. His paintings were characterized by sensuality, poetic atmosphere and expressive colours. He often depicted figurative subjects or parts of an alluring female body (Girl and Stairway to Heaven). His paintings also showed everyday objects such as glasses, taps or showers, which he combined with simple geometric shapes and abstract colourful areas. He painted his pictures using saturated, pure colours, which are characteristic of the style of pop-art. Since the mid-1960s he has been using unconventional materials such as live leeches, vibrators, audio tapes and other items. The works of Zarębski are filled with themes of sex and sensuality, which the artist depicts symbolically by referring to the duality of nature. The beauty that his works of art present is a source of both joy and pain. They point to both the transitory nature of life and its ability to regenerate. In his ever more provocative works of performance art he turns himself into a skilled and perverse magician who is constantly testing the limits of human tolerance while stimulating the viewer’s sensuality and sexuality (e.g. his work of performance art entitled Drone shown at Galeria Bielska BWA in 2009). In 2009, he presented his works at Warsaw’s Art NEW media gallery. The exhibition entitled “Erotic Subjects of a Less Virile Eros” arranged to celebrate his seventieth birthday became an opportunity to present a review of his artistic creations. In the same year he also showed some other of his works at an exhibition entitled “In Retrospect” staged at Galeria Bielska BWA in Bielsko-Biała.