Hubert Czerepok

Hubert Czerepok's work is characterized by the use of a wide range of mediums - video, new media, installation art, drawing, painting and photography. Like other members of his generation who are part of the Polish intellectual avant-garde, Czerepok undermines exhibition conventions and other art-world procedures. The artist's ironical process of negotiation with the art world is similarly given expression in the video work Do You Know Anything About Polish Art?, which introduces viewers to the current exhibition cluster. This work exposes the embarrassment of passersby and art connoisseurs asked to answer the same questions about Polish art.

In recent years, Czerepok's visual lexicon has become suffused with violence, fear and premonitions of an impending catastrophe. Among other things, it makes reference to mysterious UFO appearances and apocalyptic conspiracy theories. His images are always "second-hand," and are borrowed from a hodge-podge of sources - the Internet, online photography archives, newspapers, literature and cinema. The strategic piracy he employs enables him to make use of an existing image, while endowing it with a new context and interpretation. This is done by means of a variety of artistic tactics - such as a drawing technique characterized by fluid, almost caricatural outlines that capture the image in a minimalist manner, reminiscent of the outlines of victims at a crime scene. The violent elements in his work are thus always camouflaged, and the neuroses of contemporary culture are translated into lighthearted, easily digestible forms. The video Playoff, for instance, features a violent confrontation between two groups of soccer fans, which has been processed into a delicate linear animation work. The drawing series Séance was inspired by images of the destroyed Twin Towers, Holocaust scenes, violent demonstrations and terror attacks. It seems that by transforming such troubling documentary materials into insouciant drawings in large-scale formats, Czerepok manages to conjure up the ghosts of the dead.