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Lukasz Skapski, 2007 Photos from the series The Machines. | | |
Be most welcome to the opening of our exhibition:
Lukasz Skapski | DO IT YOURSELF
on Friday, 18.01.2008, at 7 pm
Z.AK | GALLERY, Linienstr.148, Berlin Mitte
More details can be found here:
www.zak-gallery.com
DO IT YOURSELF
In socialist Poland it was almost impossible to acquire a tractor. Even though they were essential to farming, most farmers could only buy a tractor by paying a substantial bribe. Necessity forced farmers to become inventive, and to defy the system that imposed limits upon them. They constructed their own machines using spare parts and bits and pieces from whatever machines they could find. Decommisioned army vehicles and pre-WWI German machines were not uncommon sources.
When Lukasz Skapski photographed the hand-constructed vehicles in 2005, he recognized some that he had seen earlier back in 1982, when the farmers’ resourcefulness first impressed him. “My intention was to show the incomparable energy that people muster up in difficult situations.”
Since 2005 the artist has collected these astonishing examples of human innovation, always widening the scope of his interest towards the “self-made”. More series were created, showing passionate home constructers amid their laborious constructions. At present Skapski is working on a series that portraits self-made houseboats. Also the typology of the tractors has now been added to by an extensive collection of three-wheeled tractors. As in the previous series, the photogaphs surprise not only because of the fantastical machines, but also through the power of their owners, rendered in the forceful portraits of Lukasz Skapski.
Lukasz Skapski born 1958 in Krakow. Studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Since 2001 founding member of Azorro supergroup (with Oskar Dawicki, Igor Krenz and Wojtek Niedzielko). Since 2002 teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. He works with different media, in recent years concentrating on video and photography where his main concerns are contemporary social or political issues. One can describe Skapski’s approach as conceptual and never void of a certain irony.
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