The Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology invites you to an exhibition of Mateusz Kolk’s works tangled states, which will run from 17 February to 7 April. Visitors will be treated to an extraordinary journey that begins in Krakow and leads to Krakow. Along the way, however, we visit with the artist: his private world of imagination, Japan and Hong Kong. The presented works are full of ambiguous elements and references to the culture, art and traditions of the Far East, which has fascinated the artist for years.
Tangled States is an attempt to show what a journey inside the artist’s head might look like. Mateusz Kolk’s work is a highly original entangled Multiverse. A place where Japan, Hong Kong and Poland intertwine; manga, anime, European comics
and gothic art. From this collection of seemingly completely incompatible elements, an extraordinary world of imagination emerges, in which you want to stay for longer. A world that you want to explore and experience. You want to find recurring elements and look for connections between successive prints.
Experiencing this structure is a non-linear story full of ‘sewn-in’ meanings and patterned repetitions, the clues of which a careful observer can explore the artist’s world. In the exhibition, we travel with him through places and times. We visit spaces and meet people in situations which, frozen in prints, are stop-frames from a larger story. In several cases, Mateusz Kolek reveals to us what story or emotion inspired a particular work.
Tangled States is an exhibition – an adventure that takes the viewer through several parallel intertwined realities, to which the artist leads the viewer through symbols, such as: a child with a plastic dragon, a woman in a mask with hare’s ears, or a man with a tiger’s head standing surrounded by cats in a thicket of tall skyscrapers.
Tangled States is an exhibition – an adventure that takes the viewer through several realities that are intertwined in parallel. We get to know the artist’s world through ambiguous, non-obvious symbols. What is the child with the plastic dragon talking about? What is the woman in the harelip mask looking for? What reality is the figure with the head of a tiger surrounded by a bunch of cats trying to lead us to?
This series of drawings is a collection of moments caught on the street that somehow demandedto be recorded. I like to find in them a broader context, sometimes a metaphor for our times or ourselves. The series started with Hong Kong, expanded to Tokyo and Krakow, where I live. I was intrigued to find common features between Asian metropolises and Krakow,” says Mateusz Kołek.
The exhibition of works will be on show at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology from 17 February to 7 April this year.
Information about the exhibition:
Mateusz Kołek
Entangled states
Gallery Europe – Far East
Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Cracow
Opening: 16.02.2024, at 6 p.m
Duration: 17.02-07.04.2024
Curator: Przemysław Wideł
Arrangement: Mateusz Kołek, Przemysław Wideł
Coordination: Ewa Mazurkiewicz, Monika Werner
Visual identification: Marta Szmyd
Animations: How & How(Foot Massage, Goldfish Market, Taxi Cat, Temple Street Cats), XULM(Marcin Surma)(Girl, Octopus Girl, KS, Shinrin-yoku)
Music: Merry Lamb Lamb, Yum! Laksa
source: press materials
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