Artists Support

About Tomasz Kręcicki

Scale and the body are major motifs in Tomasz Kręcicki’s paintings. Fingers are often grotesquely enlarged and engaged in various undefined activities, as in Night, 2022. The paintings have an absurdist element but their formal reliance on simplified and sometimes repeating shapes also evoke the artist’s continued exploration of the abstract in figuration. A surrealist unreality imbues the artist’s depictions of common activities and everyday objects, recalling a Lynchian atmosphere but often cut with a dash of the campy spookiness of B-movie horror. The recurrence of fingers, hands and eyes, is also used as a direct reference to a painter’s tools.

A major theme in his work has been a kind of “bathos”: the mockery of earnestness, undercutting aspirations through absurdity, jokes, and wit. At the same time, works depicting everyday objects such as long wires to repel birds, push pins or even a loose button, can evoke a sense of anxiety and foreboding created by the implied physical threat and the cryptic nature of the narrative content. Kręcicki’s subject matter then is inherently existential, addressing both contemporary politics and its repercussions on the individual.

Kręcicki was born 1990 in Żary, Poland and he lives and works in Kraków.

About Ocalenie

For over 20 years Ocalenie (meaning “rescue”) has been helping refugees, immigrants and repatriates live in Poland. Ocalenie has a youth center and help center, they offer daily support, psychological services, free Polish lessons and they help people looking for housing.

Since the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border began in 2022, Ocalenie has been providing medical and humanitarian aid to those in need, as well as necessities including power banks, food, clothing, translation services and legal assistance.

Ocalenie also leads workshops and events to fight against discrimination and racism.