Janusz Bałdyga, Poland

Born in 1954 in Lublin, lives and works in Warsaw.

Currently professor of performance art at the University of Arts in Poznań, Janusz Baldyga studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1974, graduating in the studio of prof Stefan Gierowski in 1979. Baldyga is today one of the most experienced and skilled performance artist internationally.

Co-founder of the Pracownia artist collective (1976-1981) and member of the Akademia Ruchu theatre group since 1979.

He has participated in numerous exhibitions, symposiums and artistic projects in Poland and abroad, e.g. at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Labirynt Gallery, Lublin ; Wschodnia Gallery, Łódź ; Galerie Donguy, Paris; and other venues in Germany, Taiwan, Belarus, Switzerland, Israel, Norway, Spain, China Japan, Indonesia, Kanada and the United States. He lives and works in Warsaw (Poland).

Over many years of practice, Baldyga has developed a unique style, characterised by a reduction of the language and means of articulation and the use of simple elements such as planks, nails, ropes, water, textiles or glass, which he uses to create elementary structures: the line, the circle, the rectangle, the point. He has introduced the term ‘marked places’ to denote space and its determinants, and the dynamics lent to it by human presence. The artist’s body serves also as a construction element, an instrument of describing the surrounding space, a testimony of wrestling with matter (Inclinations, Attention, Border), balancing around a critical point and attempting to reveal a sphere of latency are inherent to Bałdyga’s work.

His performances create a sense of pulling the viewer into the space and course of ritual. Their social, political or philosophical subtext leaves no doubt as to the artist’s country of origin and tradition, without, however, in any way blurring the universal dimension of his highly individual communications. As the artist says himself, ‘i am not a commentator but the creator of a particular situation which, being located in a specific space and time, cannot be free from sociopolitical references’.

Janusz Baldyga. Obiekt Tymczasowy / Temporary Object. Propaganda Gallery. Warsaw. Photo : Zuzanna Głód.