Fluxus East

Jarosław Kozłowski

From 1963-69, Kozłowski studied painting at the State College of Fine Art (the Academy for Fine Art since 1996) in Poznań, where he also began to teach in 1969. In 1972 – together with Andrzej Kostołowski – he made numerous contacts to artists in the East and West through the action NET. A diversified exchange of artistic ideas emerged, but the action also drew police attention; a private exhibition was closed down, and a large amount of material was confiscated. The NET action also formed the basis of intense relations to Fluxus artists, as a consequence of which the Fluxus Festival 1977 took place in Galeria Akumulatory 2 (founded by Kozłowski, 1972-1989), in addition to numerous individual exhibitions of Fluxus artists (Ken Friedman, Emmett Williams, Dick Higgins, Eric Andersen, Geoffrey Hendricks).

Kozłowski received a fellowship from the British Council in 1979, and from the Artists’ Programme of the DAAD Berlin in 1984/85. From 1991-1993, he was curator at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. Kozłowski is a professor at the Academy for Fine Art, Poznań.

One of Poland’s most internationally successful conceptual artists, Kozłowski works in various media including installation, drawing, object and performance. The primary thematic focusses of his works are the concepts of space and time, language, object and man. Debate with Fluxus (during the festival in 1977) opened up a new dimension for Kozłowski. It resulted in liberation from the conceptual stringency of his previous work, in which he had approached the paradoxes of logic in an almost scientific manner. Fluxus enabled him to become aware of the power of humour, laughter, irony and paradoxes, which is still noticeable in his current works.