Xawery Wolski

Xawery Wolski’s art is a demonstration of connectivity and communication. Growing up in Poland during the Communist Party’s occupation, the artist inherited an atmosphere of both regression and rebellion. From his restricted life as a youth, Xawery has become dedicated to the pursuit of freedom, especially for the artist. “Knowing that we are all alike…we have a desire for freedom, happiness….we fear disease, bad luck, death…and finally, no matter which cultural, social, or moral patterns we know, we look for communication.”
 
Wolski’s predecessors in minimal sculpture (Brancusi, Judd, Morris) inform the art he creates with the purest organic materials:  seeds, beans, rope, clay, shells, stone. His work with seeds illustrates the continuum of form and life; a seed contains all that its maturity will be: its birth, death, and eventual return to life. The use of seeds and other organic material for Wolski is not only a homage to nature but a way to connect with the metaphor of continuation and cycles of earth’s history. The sculptures draw no limits and seek to stimulate reflections on presence and absence, giving a metaphysical aspect to work.
 
The artist describes his Globos, knitted wire globes suspended mid-air, as “the opposite of minimalism.” At once illuminated balls of light, phosphorescent jellyfish, and cell-like microorganisms, the inanimate balls seem to breathe. Hundreds of shimmering transparent globes create an immersive experience, akin in many aspects to a room full of Ruth Asawa sculptures, but all aglow. “It’s like nature, the cells expand in space, taking over the space and making it beautiful,” the artist notes. “Intriguing, different, but not like taking possession of the space.” He leaves room for breath, air, life. 
 
Fresh out of art school, Wolski was engrossed in a project involving thousands of hand-formed terracotta chain links, which he eventually fired into clay chains and presented piled on the ground. These links are alluded to today in monumental bronze chain sculptures which stretch toward the ceiling. The very first dress he created was “a long time ago,” in Perú, woven of hand-formed terracotta beads. He had visited the pre-Columbian graves of Inca warriors and was inspired by the lasting idea of the garments they were buried in. The body becomes dust; the armor of adornment holds the shape of the long-passed soul within for centuries. “The idea of the absent body—there is an existential background to all these works,” he says. “The dresses [I make] are spiritual tunics, or armor for a knight.” He never makes utilitarian dresses for wear—they remain themselves solely objects of art, ones that subvert the ancient realm of weavers whose aim was to wrap, to cover, to adorn. He works, rather, in the employ of art, and beauty, and ideas. 
 
Xawery Wolski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1960 and currently lives and works between his studios in Poland and Mexico City. He was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts (Warsaw), the Academy of Fine Art (Paris), and the Institue of Higher Education in Visual Arts (Paris). Wolski was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2007. The artist has exhibited his work in countries throughout the world and has been awarded residencies in Asia, South America, Mexico, the United States, and Europe. As he travels, he continues to collect the natural products of each country as inspiration for his art.