Xawery Deskur-Wolski

Xawery Deskur-Wolski (b. 1988 in Aix-en-Provence) is a multimedia artist who lives and works in Kraków. In 2015 he completed his MA studies at the Faculty of Graphic Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków; he is also a graduate of directing at the AMA Film Academy in Kraków. This double formation shapes his practice: he moves freely between film, comics, animation, painting, installation and activities in public space.

Deskur-Wolski's work has a narrative and conceptual character - his starting points are often peculiar biographies, mystifications and forgotten cultural phenomena, which the artist translates into the language of art. This is well shown by the exhibition „Indian Epimetheus” (Kraków, 2017), in which he drew attention to the Polish Indianist movement; inspired by the biography of Stanisław Supłatowicz - Sat-Okh, who claimed to be the son of a Shawnee chief - he showed monochrome, pale canvases covered with pages written in Braille. In turn the work „Crystal skulls are modern fakes? Adventure movie”, made with Hubert Gromny - today in the collection of the Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków - confronts the myths of the present day with humour.

He co-created the artistic groups Spirala, which in 2011-2013 managed the events of the Reservoir of Culture at the Bunkier Sztuki, and Więcej Światła. He also readily goes out into the space of the city - his installation „Macaroni” was set up in 2013 on the roof of the PKP Powiśle building in Warsaw.

He is a laureate of the nationwide Narracje #7 competition (2015, together with Olga Kowalska) and the winner of the Hestia Artistic Journey (2014), as part of which he undertook a month-long residency in New York and showed a solo exhibition at the Propaganda gallery in Warsaw. Combining media and disciplines, Deskur-Wolski is one of the most interesting narrators of the young generation of Polish conceptual art.