Bartek Świątecki aka Pener ( b. 1981, Lives and works in Olsztyn, Polska )
Education
Since 1996 related to graffiti and than street art scene in Poland.
2001 – 2006 MAGISTER OF ART, (M.F.A. degree), Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, The Faculty of Fine Arts, graduated with honours.
Since 2008 I have worked as a teacher in an Eric Mendelsohn Secondary School of Fine Arts in Olsztyn/ Poland -teaching drawing and painting. In 2019 I received the title of Certified Teacher – this is the last fourth, highest level of teacher’s professional development in Poland.
Prize
Honorary badge „Of Merit to Polish Culture”- awarded by Mr Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, Minister of Culture and National Heritage. 2024.
The Individual Award of the Director of the Center of Artistic Education I degree for special contribution to the development of artistic education in Poland 2024.
Marshal Art Scholarship of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, 2023.
Bronze Medal from the Polish President for merits and years of service in education, 2019.
The Individual Award of the Director of the Center of Artistic Education II degree for special contribution to the development of artistic education in Poland 2019.
Statue of St.James in the field of Culture and Art, Mayor of Olsztyn City, Poland, 2016.
Art Scholarship from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute -for a trip and the NOCTURNES exhibition at the 886Geary gallery in San Francisco, 2015.
Art Award for outstanding Achievements in the Arts, Mayor of Olsztyn City, Poland, 2015.
Marshal Art Scholarship of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, 2014.
Bartek Świątecki’s work mixes abstraction and traditional graffiti. High art and youth culture, modernism and skateboarding. His images are based around geometric groupings and angular forms which reference futuristic architectural design. The apparent slickness of Świątecki’s productions is often at odds with the decayed settings the works are placed in. The visual language used in these pieces gives a glimpse in to a brave new world of graffiti and fine art cross over. It’s a world where graffiti writers are as happy to quote from De Stijl as they are Wu Tang.
As well as painting, Świątecki’s practice includes sculpture and installation. His sculptures are three dimensional workings of the paintings that carve triangular and pyramidal forms into real word space. Similarly, his installations contact together to make helixscapes of networked lines in public settings. In all of this work, outside of the art historical and graffiti elements, there is sense of the mapping of the digital world. Świątecki’s is re-humanising a reality which should exist on a computer monitor. And this is perhaps there greatest paradox. A graffiti writer making landscape paintings from his time in virtual reality.
Cedar Lewisohn
When you are a graffiti artist, your whole world is shaped by letters, so running away from them seems to be the most difficult thing to do.
However, it appears to be even more complicated to turn your name into something that is intersubjectively communicative. Then you change your language, and the imagery seizes being univocal. The alphabet evolves into surfaces, words become shapes and the meanings move between colours and lines.
Therefore, the works created by Bartek / Pener / Świątecki cannot be understood if we do not take into account the years of his street activities. Only then can we know the way he paved as an artist and his WRITER’S BACKGROUND will be the code to decipher his abstract figures. The figures which absorb the canvas and tell us far more than it appears while seeing the painting superficially.
The code embedded in the lines is not only the formal measure and the composition based on geometry is much more than just surfaces built on one another. The series of work titled „Cosmogramma” by Bartek / Pener / Świątecki can be interpreted through the variation put forward by him, i.e. referring to the very moment when Bartek abandoned classical graffiti and started his individual search for the essence of style.
The search has become a new genre called Graffuturism, which today constitutes the indispensable part of the modern art.
Bartek / Pener / Światecki repeatedly refers to the ideas from his beginnings and in that way, the harmony of his studio works is broken by dirt and damp patches and the typographic elements convey the consistance and perrenial efforts made to develop the unique style that characterises all Bartek’s creativity.
Cezary Hunkiewicz / BrainDamage
The ease with which Bartek manages to tame the chaos is fascinating. In his paintings, he becomes the lord and ruler of the chance by enclosing thunderstorms in tight frames. He allows them to go wild, boil, and roast, but at his dictation of precisely defined conditions. In the hands of Pener, the explosion of colours and the cacophony of structures synthesize as a whole, still disturbing, and at the same time harmonious and coherent.
But everyone can see it for themselves.
Probably not everyone knows, however, that Pener’s painting may be like his whole life. For as long as I can remember, my brother sits comfortably astride the fence of contradiction, carelessly dangling one foot in a bohemian madness, while slipping the other into a home slipper. It is possible that that is one of Bartek’s greatest values, because while remaining an unconventional artist, unquestionably original and constantly searching, he bypassed in an organic way the reefs that are probably more terrible than booze and coke: his own ego. While traveling around the world and exhibiting his works from the USA to Taiwan, he remains an artist, not The Artist, who comes smiling at people so naturally that it makes others blush. Bartek sits comfortably under the surface of Pener. It is Bartek, with whom you can nibble on celery, smoke a thoughtless cigarette, or sing along a false tune with NoMeansNo. With whom you visit seven circles of hell in his studio in Olsztyn’s Old Town on Friday, only to go with his son to launch a polystyrene plane and to go for a mighty bicycle marathon around one of the Olsztyn lakes on Saturday.
I know, of course, that Bartek has been properly educated and has been artistically active since he did not have to shave. But, in fact, what is perhaps more important is that, while being an artist by profession, he remains an artist in being a human.
Mateusz Świątecki
Solo Exhibitions:
CHASING THE WIND, solo exhibition, Galerie Chenus Longh, Paris, France 2024
VACATION FROM REALITY, solo exhibition, Fiksate Gallery, Christchurch, New Zeland, 2022
TAKE IT EASY, solo exhibition, Punkt Gallery, Gdynia, Poland, 2020
BALANCE, solo exhibition, The Book Club, London, England, 2016
NOCTURNES, solo exhibition, 886Geary Gallery, San Francisco, USA, 2015
PLANED FREESTYLE, solo exhibition, Sopa Gallery, Kosice, Slovakia, 2015
COSMOGRAMMA, solo exhibition, Inoperable Gallery, Vienna, Austria, 2015
DEKONSTRUKCJA, solo exhibition, Radar gallery, Kraków, Poland, 2012
SIGNAL TO NOIS, solo exhibition, NRD gallery, Toruń, Poland, 2011
GALERIA KOLORU, solo exhibition Rabeko gallery, Warszawa, Poland, 2011
Group Exhibitions:
31 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland 2023
Sztuka Współczesna / Urban Art, Desa Unicum, Warszawa, poland, 2023
MY SONG, Memorie Urbane, Davide Rossillo Contemporary, Formia, Italy, 2023
CHMURA, Miejska Galeria Sztuki, Częstochowa, Poland, 2022
RETRANSMISSION, Mirus Galery, Denver, USA, 2022
30 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland 2022
URBAN ART AREA, Leonarda Gallery, Warszawa, Poland, 2022
29 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2022
27 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2022
26 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2021
INTERSECTION, Pener / 36RECYCLAB, Artcan Galery, Paris, France, 2021
24 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2021
Aukcja Sztuka Ulicy, Desa Unicum,Warszawa, Poland, 2021
23 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2021
21 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2020
Aukcja Sztuka Dzisiaj, Desa Unicum, Warszawa, Poland, 2020
19 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2020
Aukcja Sztuka Ulicy, Desa Unicum, Warszawa, Poland, 2020
18 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2020
CITY CALL, Delta Art Gallery, Volos City, Greece, 2020
17 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2019
NOTE COLORS, Hsinchu City Art Gallery, Hsinchu, Taiwan, 2019
L’AVENIR GRAFFUTURISM, Mirus Gallery, Denver, USA, 2019
14 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2019
URBAN ABSTRACT, Fiksate Gallery, Christchurch, New Zeland, 2019
NEW ORDER, Streetart Doping Gallery, Centrum Praskie Koneser, Warszawa, Poland, 2018
LE TEMS D’UN ETE, Art Can Gallery, Marseille, France, 2018
12 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2018
AR/T/HITECTURE, License Art Gallery, Tainan, Taiwan, 2018
BRUCE ZEST PENER, ArtCan-Gallery, Marseille, France, 2018
10 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2018
WE ARE BACK, ArtCan-Gallery, Marseille, France, 2018
LEARN & SKATE, Street Art Charity Auction, Madrit, Spain, 2018
X Olsztyńskie Biennale Sztuki, BWA, Olsztyn, Poland, 2017
8 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2017
UNKNOWN PLEASURES, Cave Gallery-National Taipei Uniwersity Of Education, Taipei, Taiwan, 2017
ABSTRACT WORLD, group exhibition, La Popartiserie, Galerie, Strasburg, France, 2017
CONNECTING LINES, group exhibition, Creative Debus, London, England, 2017
BOM.K-ZEST-PENER, group exhibition, Galerie Nicolas-Xavier, Montpellier, France, 2017
6 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2017
INEXBRUSSELS, group show in showroom Roche Bobois, Brussels, Belgium, 2016
5 aukcja SZTUKI XXI WIEKU – aukcja kolekcjonerska, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2016
TEAM GLISS, group exhibition, Cabinet Rivet-Vigreux, Toulouse, France, 2016
3 aukcja sztuki XXI wieku, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2016
FullMoon ArtVol.2, group show, 18A Gallery, Warszawa, Poland, 2016
2 aukcja Sztuki XXI wieku, Sopocki Dom Aukcyjny, Poland, 2016
URBAN MASTERS, Group Show, HAUSAMMANN GALLERY, Miami, USA, 2015
IX Art Biennale of Olsztyn City, BWA Gallery, Olsztyn, Poland, 2015
G40 ART SUMMIT, Artwhino Gallery, Washington, USA, 2015
Ten years anniversary of the „Areszt Sztuk Associacion”, Amfilada Gallery, Olsztyn, Poland, 2015
1AM REVOLUTION, 1AM Gallery, San Francisco, USA, 2015
GRAFFUTURISM 5yr, 886Geary Gallery, San Francisco, USA, 2015
A Major Minority 2015, 1AM Gallery, San Francisco, USA, 2015
Polish Urban Art, Europejska Fundacja Kultury Miejskiej, Paris -Berlin -Batumi – Lviv -Kyiv -Minsk -Lublin -Stockholm, 2014
Same/Different, TheOutsiders Gallery. Newcastle, England, 2014
ARTURBAIN, Tajan auction house, Paris, France, 2014CIEŚLAK / SYRUĆ / ŚWIĄTECKI, at Kuratorium | galeria | przestrzeń kreatywna,Warszawa, Poland, 2014
Urbstraction, PrettyPortal Gallery, Duseldorf, Germany, 2014
PROPASTUFF, Downstairs at Mother, Londyn, England, 2014
Spring art collection, 1AM gallery, San Francisco, USA, 2014
Major Minority, 1AM gallery, San Francisco, USA, 2014
Ameryka, Wenecja, Ruś, group exhibition of association “Areszt Sztuki”, Olsztyn, Poland, 2014
PL’ group show, 44309 gallery, Dortmund, Germany, 2014
Graffuturism, OpenSpace Galery, Paris, France, 2013
Areszt Sztuki vs Front Sztuki, Olsztyn, Poland, 2012
Polski Street-art”, Auction House Rempex, Warszawa, Poland, 2012
PREDATORS, Lublin, Poland, 2011Brain Damage gallery no#1, Lublin, Poland, 2011
COME INSIDE, Warszawa, Poland, 2011
PROJEKT 40/40, Warszawa, Poland, 2011
USTRUKTURALNIENIE, Sopot, Poland, 2011
Publications:
SELECTED WORKS 15-21 / 2022
ARTYSTA I SZTUKA / 2017
KWER – Magazin der Abstraktion / 2017
LE MUR – THE WALL / Le Mur associacion / Hermann / 2017
SELECTED WORKS 2014-2016 / 2016
Forty-Forty Gallery / Fundacja Sztuki Zewnętrznej / 2016
GRAFFITI WRITING EXPRESSIONS MANIFESTES / Hazan / 2016
THE ART OF THE MURALl / Schiffer Publishing / 2016
X years anniversity of „Art Pretrial” (cat.) / 2015
COSMOGRAMMA / catalog for exhibition at INOPERABLE GALLERY / 2015
IX Art Biennale of Olsztyn City (cat.) / 2015
The Urban Contemporary Art Guide / 2015
Polish Urban Art (cat.) European Fundation for Urban Culture / 2015
DECONSTRUCTION / selected works 2010-2013 / 2014
GRAFFITI GOES EAST / concrete – whole city / 2014
GRAFFITI W POLSCE /carta banca / 2013
POLSKI STREET ART I /carta blanca / 2012
POLSKI STREET ART II /carta blanca /2012
ABSTRACT GRAFFITI / merrel / 2012
MURAL ART VOL.III / publikat / 2011
BIKE ART / publikat / 2011