the european biennial of contemporary art
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artists

Oskar Dawicki

1971, Warsaw, PL Lives in Warsaw, PL

Tree of Knowledge, 2008 Performance, video, photograph

ROVERETO

Oskar_dawicki_opt

Oskar Dawicki is known for ironic, critical and subtly anarchistic actions, performances and installations that approach identity issues in relation to the persona of the artist, institutional structures and paradoxes of reality. Utilizing neo-Dadaist strategies, the artist highlights and mocks the absurdities of society in this post-consumer phase of late capitalism. Politics, economics and everyday life are reflected in the distorted mirror of Dawicki’s art of resistance. Established norms of moral, spiritual and social order are challenged and put on trial. His Tree of Knowledge attempts to zoom in, with the artist’s micro-lens, on the primordial moments of human ethics and the foundation of knowledge. The artist re-enacts the scene from the Bible, where Adam and Eve consume forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, thus committing a sin and consequently being denied access to the Tree of Life. Dawicki’s masquerade is grotesque and soaked in irony. Stripping away pathos with the magic of a sorcerer, he narrates an epic of desire in an age at the end of innocence. The fruit is half consumed; the judgment is suspended and supposedly, hope for a new history is reborn.


Location

ROVERETO

ADAM BUDAK: "PRINCIPLE HOPE"

EX PETERLINI, VIA SAVIOLI 20 – MANIFATTURA TABACCHI, P.ZZA MANIFATTURA 1 -STAZIONE FERROVIARIA, PIAZZALE ORSI, I-38068 ROVERETO, ITALY

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