The exhibition Pan Pan RDK presents the works of Radek Szlaga, a Polish artist living in Los Angeles. It can be seen until 2.11.2025 at the Arsenal City Gallery in Poznań. Among other works, the artist presented his latest work Decade of Decay, which shows the dichotomy of experience between transition Poland and life in the USA. The exhibition is held with the guest participation of the group Penerstwo, whose works are also on display.
The exhibition Pan Pan RDK presents the work of Radek Szlaga, a Polish-born, long-time Los Angeles-based painter whose work pushes the boundaries of humour, bad taste and neo-expressionism that have formed the painting of the last four decades. Szlaga, aged 44, operates between two different realities – the American art scene and the Poland of the transition period – and it is this dual perspective that is one of the keys to reading his work; it is best seen in his latest work Decade of Decay, which was also presented in Poznań.
The choice of city to host the exhibition was no coincidence. It was in the capital of Wielkopolska that the artist studied, graduating with honours from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2005 with a degree in painting and defending his doctorate in painting at the University of Arts in Poznań in 2011. Another important stage was his activity in the PENERSTWO group, founded in 2007, with names such as Wojciech Bąkowski, Piotr Bosacki, Tomasz Mróz, Konrad Smoleński, Magdalena Starska and Iza Tarasewicz. Although ‘PENERSTWO’ refers to the local symbolism of the margins, the group quickly moved beyond Poznań; it did not have a written aesthetic, operating more like a self-perpetuating machine and, as Szlaga himself described it, was a ‘bold move in a vacuum’.
Like a boy band, the group initially consisted of five young men. They were soon joined by Magda Starska and Iza Tarasewicz, but this did not mean the end of the boysband, as the idea of combining different energies coming from different daring proposals gained the upper hand. The exhibition Pan Pan RDK tries to show this fragment of the group’s history, which stands out with the energy of a time capsule, through technological tropes and artefacts: audio and video recordings or costumes used during performances. Part of the exhibition – ground floor and basement – is dedicated to PENERST and presents the work of each of its members and women members, including the mysterious Ziemiak Ziemek book created by Szlaga together with Wojciech Bąkowski. On the occasion of the exhibition, Magda Starska’s 2008 work, Ice Melting, which greets visitors to the gallery with an irrepressible, hopeful gesture, is once again on display , writes exhibition curator Julia Marchand.
Szlaga always carries sketchbooks with her; she treats them as her favourite tool for combining figuration with textual notation and developing two parallel pictorial strategies. Although conservators have tended to overlook sketchbooks, for him they have a perverse role – enabling him to build a direct, often striking relationship with the material and the viewer.
In preparing the materials for the exhibition, the artist collected numerous notebooks; the only missing one is Freedom Club, which has gone missing. Szlaga admits that the sketchbooks help him tame his compulsive desire to paint ‘everything’. He also sees them as a vehicle for invigoration: he treats the sketchbooks as a kind of film that demands the active participation of the viewer and changes with his gaze.
Shown in the main space of the exhibition, Szlaga’s series of works on fabric work in a similar way. Places I Wasn’t Going to See (2019-) are large-format diaries, including from places that exist only in the artist’s imagination. They were created in response to various impulses, desires and spaces. The artist is constantly working on them: reworking, cutting, re-stitching; adding new formal and material elements. Essentially, they represent the artist’s personal geography, including a map of his studio. They seem to contrast with the sculptures presented on the ground floor (Various Bozies, 2018-2020), but in spirit they are similar to them in that they too have been created by combining many different materials. The horror and humour of the past perhaps give way here to a sense of wisdom. Combined in the exhibition Pan Pan RDK, these two elements form a manifesto that underpins the artist’s successful mid-career exhibition: a clear good-boy, bad-boy attitude, adds Julia Marchand.
The opening of Radek Szlaga’s work, Pan Pan RDK. Took place at the Arsenal City Gallery on 18 September, but the exhibition itself can be seen until 2 November this year. Admission is free.
photos: Szymon Kavka
source: press materials
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