Olaf Brzeski

KAAF Institute will host distinguished Polish artist, Olaf Brzeski, with a series titled: “Once Upon a Time in Iran”. Created with ceramic artists from Tabriz during a three-month artist residency program (spent in three trips over a year), “Once Upon a Time in Iran” is Brzeski’s second collaboration with KAAF Foundation; the former being his sculpture installation in Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014. Olaf Brezski works in mediums of installation, illustration, sculpture & film. This time, he’s chosen ceramics as his language, and a field of recycled and redesigned material as his exhibition space.Production Manager: Atefeh Fazel

Curator: Alireza Labeshka

Assistants: Batool Ahmadpour, Elham Hosseini from Qobar Group

Exhibition Design and Build: Hossain Zanganeh, Sadra Keyhani, Hamed

It is with a remarkable sense of imagination that Olaf Brzeski reinterprets the tradition and scope of sculpture. Many of the artist’s works refer directly to the human form, enacting not so much the physical as the emotional depths of the subject. Brzeski’s sculptural bodies are replete with the unexpected, the uncanny, the unnatural and the oversized. The source of these fantastic, astonishing forms is always the idea, then the sketch – as the simplest metaphor for the act of creation

Olaf Brzeski (born 1975 in Wrocław) is a sculptor and author of installations and films. He is one of the most original sculptors of the young generation – he experiments with various materials, creates optical illusions, builds untypical relationships between a tangible object, a moment of creation, durability and experience resulting from the exposure of a work of art in the museum space. Brzeski studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Wrocław University of Technology and the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. A large-format sculpture “For the Love og a Woman” was created in 2012 and was presented on the artist’s retrospective exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. The sculpture is made of painted steel and aluminium, although it looks as if it were assembled from delicate and flexible cereal ears. It depicts two silhouettes interlocked in a fight: three metres tall “straw” giants, seemingly on the verge of disintegration, wrestle with each other defying laws of physics with their size and fragility. Brzeski produces a perfect illusion and at the same time, with unique precision – it took several months of work – sketches a three-dimensional picture that refers to the ancient art. Similarly as in other sculptures of recent years, the artist addresses the construct of masculinity; it is a story about aggression, desire, violence, shame, power and fear of vulnerability.

1994-1995 - studied at the Faculty of Architecture of Technical University in Wroclaw
1995-2000 - studied at the Faculty of Sculpture at the Wroclaw Academy of Art and Design
Lives and works in Wroclaw