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SCULPTURES
Christmas Shopping 2003 bas-relief, wood, polychromy, collage
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more works
Making Cover, 2006 - bas-relief, wood, polychromy, collage
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more works
Thanks Our Customers, 2006 - bas-relief, wood, polychromy, collage
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more works
Paradise, 2006 - bas-relief, wood, polychromy, collage
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more works
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COVERS STORIES
One of the projects which has been in development for the longest period (since 1998), is Covers. The project’s duration is supposedly infinite, depending only on whether magazines and newspapers will continue to be published – a process unlikely to stop in the predictable future. What inspires the artist, namely the tragicomic character of our civilization’s persistence and of the changes it undergoes, can be found every day on the covers of magazines. Their peculiar language of consumption-centered pictorial multi-culture, as well as their oracular status, represents the essence of our life, dreams and desires. The media represents us, according to the artist. To be on the covers of newspapers is to reach the top, acquire power and splendor. However, the kind of success a printed paper has to offer is of a volatile character. The smiling, sexy actress from a TV magazine cover will be destroyed within a week, together with impermanent paper and hue. And, as the years will go by, her physical identity will also be undergoing a process of natural destruction. Enter the artist, who takes up the function that has been attributed to him for millennia – to transfer meanings and symbols into the realm of the sacred. Just as the medieval Madonnas, heads of the pharaohs, Baroque virgins, or characters from Byzantine icons have retained their timeless youth, so will a prison torturer, Al Gore, a sitcom starlet, or Barbie doll become immortalized thanks to the artist. Sadly, it is only the chosen ones that this honor will be bestowed upon. That is why Wojtek Zasadni’s most important creative act is choosing, out of hundreds of thousands, the one cover. What remains then is a month of earnest sculptural work of using hard polychromic wood to eternalize, as artists have done for thousands of years, meanings and our message for posterity. What message? This is the very question Wojtek Zasadni poses with his work, provoking us to a moment of self-reflection.
The series best illustrates the artist’s irony and fascination with icons of mass culture. Their kitsch and multi-cultural universality is a phenomenon fabricated by our culture. In his vanity, man can get an impression that the world God wanted to destroy by causing the confusion of languages is being restored. The contemporary tower of Babel has been completed and furnished comfortably and with splendor. It is thanks to Wojtek’s works that this structure becomes a caricature, the language becomes gibberish and the might of our accomplishments provokes laughter.
 
■ Wunderbar-Kreuzer, Essen 2000 - instalation inviting
everybodies to be on (in) a big plastic box-cover
The series
„Covers” best illustrates the artist’s irony and fascination with icons of mass
culture. Their kitsch and multi-cultural universality is a phenomenon
fabricated by our culture. In his vanity, man can get an impression that the
world God wanted to destroy by causing the confusion of languages is being
restored. The contemporary tower of Babel has been
completed and furnished comfortably and with splendor. It is thanks to Wojtek’s
works that this structure becomes a caricature, the language becomes gibberish
and the might of our accomplishments provokes laughter..
PAROXYSMS (NOT) REALITY 2006
Stach Szabłowski -fragment of the text from the catalogue
■ THANKS OUR CUSTOMERS Gallery PROGRAM
We Thank Our Customers was made from a group photograph of workers at their electronics store. The original photograph was taken during the anniversary of the company which decide to thank their shoppers for years of faithful shopping. The heroes are portrayed in a fashion of ancient painting compositions, lined up in rows, except there are many more figures. After all it’s a matter of “human storage,” setting the whole store into motion. The crowd is crammed into corporate order and in their uniforms they unwaveringly stare at the viewer with a friendly smile. Associations with a sculpted altar are irresistible. This hieratic, zonal composition drives us to think about how these angelic choirs were depicted. In this work as with the altar depictions, it is impossible to go into discourse, as a similarly definitive character which cut off discourse had an earlier work of the artist: A low relief of a decorated colorful dog with the inscription “everything is ugly.” One can’t even give an appreciative invocation before this altar because the three dimensional sculpted workers are telling us "our master is the client." People put on the altar (probably overworked, low paid, and maybe even laid-off considering the time period the picture was taken) can be perceived as embodiment of the market or standard which with its “invisible hand” isn’t as abstract, as it is transcendental. The piece has missionary strength. The original model for this large low relief is a picture from a Christian cult brochure. The image, in its aesthetic qualities of overwhelming kitsch is characteristic for religious propaganda and allows the audience to look inside the supernatural reality. It is a spiritual advertisement, a promise Wojciech Zasadni decided to treat conditionally serious before returning it to the realm of art. In the same way, he recklessly sends into space hybrid communications from newspaper and magazine covers. The power struggle between artist and iconosphere is enough for us to imagine what would be if all promises came true and all paintings materialized. Total representation is not necessary and would be hard to swallow – this small fragment is horrific enough as it is.
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