Location: Bolinas, CA
Medium: Performance, video, conceptual art
Website: dawidradziszewski.com/go-surf-in-your-own-hometown
Paweł Kruk was born in 1976 in Koszalin, Poland. He received an MA in Drawing from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań in 2000. His diploma work was included in the group exhibition The American Effect at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2003. He received fellowships from CCA Kitakyushu, Japan and ArtsLink in New York (both 2002), attended the Advanced Art Course with Marina Abramović organized by the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como (2000), and was a resident at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York (2007) and the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito (2008–2010). He was nominated for the 2010 SECA Award and is a two-time recipient of the Young Poland Award. He attended the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2011–12. He has lived in Bolinas, California for many years and is represented by Dawid Radziszewski Gallery in Warsaw.
Kruk works in performance, video, and conceptual art, with humor, appropriation, and obsessive embodiment as his primary tools. A sustained interest in the alter ego runs through his work: he has impersonated Michael Jordan, Bruce Lee, and various artists and athletes, borrowing their words and gestures with total commitment. A recurring preoccupation is what he calls the artist’s desire — what does an artist want, and from whom? His solo exhibitions often turn this question back on the institutions and social structures that support or frustrate artistic ambition. Living in Bolinas — a remote unincorporated community on the Marin coast known for its artists, surfers, and deliberate insularity — has deeply shaped his work; his most recent major body of work meditates on what it means to surf, or refuse to surf, in one’s own hometown.
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