16 Dec 08 by Mirek Antoniewicz
Mirek Antoniewicz artworks

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The Shit

cycles Casting to my life

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29 Dec 08 01:33

I love this latest series of small paintings The theme is very poignant for me, I suppose I recall only too well being bundled up in the winter and shoved outdoors into the bleak, grey Canadian cold. "Be back by 6 o'clock for dinner." Consoling words for a bundled up kid with nothing to do and nowhere to go and three hours left until dinner but I always did find others of my ilk and the three hours alloted me was never enough. They were my best of times yet in my minds eye this particular image captures the essence.

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05 Jan 09 23:12

Poignant indeed Mr. Kagan. Do you propose that the solitary drive and rectitude - the individuality of the artist is moulded in these fledgling, formative years?

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06 Jan 09 01:33

Gadzooks, he's back!!!
No Mr. Delaney, I make no such proposition but I would say that generally, not always, artists as children were and are prone to being solitary (not lonely) types and quite happy to be on their own. Playing games and making things of their own invention with whatever material that may be at hand.
Mirek's little painting here is very evocative of the grand times I had as a kid with all that mud, snow and pigeon shit.

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06 Jan 09 21:24

hello, thank you very much for opinion. I think about mu childhood very symbolically . And I like words L.Bourgeois "My childhood never lost its magic, never lost its mystery and never lost its drama"I am painter and I can paint image from each day of life .

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07 Jan 09 01:02

Mirek, thanks for that quote because it says it all so perfectly. Hopefully none of us should ever lose that childhood mystery and magic but somehow life conspires against us. It takes a tremendous and courageous act of will to hang on to that magic. When I see it, I say that's an honest work (my finest compliment) and I sensed that in your bird paintings.

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07 Jan 09 20:29

In my lacklustre dishwashing job, I sometimes work for Harald Milewski the database administrator from Stuttgart (He's German of distant Polish origin). Anyway Harald is the kind of IT professional that's been around for many years, has seen it all, and basically is not impressed by anything in the world of computing. Although he did sack me in the past for being such a hopeless programmer, I still can't resist liking the guy for his intelligence and humour. Every now and then I write a program with the intention of impressing him, but he's always shrugged it off in an expansive, generous way, leaving me with the suspicion that he thinks it's complete junk.
For some reason, I get the same feeling about Mr. Kagan (in the context of art). I've had the honour of actually meeting him personally - so Mirek I can assure you that if he pays you his finest compliment, you should consider it a true accolade and feel *REAL GOOD* about it.
One day I too would like to earn an "honest work" assessment - the very words have that ring of truth about them, as do your paintings.

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09 Jan 09 08:20

Hillel, Your estimate is very important for me becouse as you are good and mature painter. I know your creation and I respect your expression. My english is most simple soo... sometime would meet (face to face) at bottle of wine nicely and talk. Thank you very much.

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09 Jan 09 08:43

John – Paul, thank you for nice words too. My photo /on Town Place in 1959/ is inspiration for my pictures. After 50 years living memory is back rear /see example Amarcord Federico F./ and my cycle of image is my memory. There is simple and personal and equivalent has in experience other
people. I think Mr.Kagan too...

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09 Jan 09 12:47

In the past, some of us had thorough discussions on both the use of photographs in painting and narration. I think Mirek here is teaching a lesson of how an artist can get inspiration from one visual input and take it so much further with imagination, creativity and honest look in the inside of his character. It is a story told in pure pictorial means. The changes he makes in each image are so slight and yet so important. For some reason this series of works and the quote he gave us, made me think of the Paula Rego show Karen, Hanjo and I saw in Madrid last year and the impact it had on me. How it is possible to have it all together: strictly figurative work, with strong narrative content, being contemporary, great painting.

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09 Jan 09 15:15

Thanks Mirek, it's good to hear your voice here on AP. Don't be self conscious about your English... it's fine. Certainly no worse than JP's, Hanjo's or my own... Maria, of course is different, speaking, reading and writing all tongues and dialects perfectly, she is capable of getting the word "incubation" into a sentence in some 300 different languages but of course she's some kind of strange and mystical genius.

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16 Nov 09 13:11

Good luck with your exhibition Mirek. Let us know how it went.

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03 Dec 09 08:33

So, Mirek? how did the show go? Tell us.

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03 Dec 09 20:16

Maria - there's no point in forcing the issue. To my mind, in the end, it's Kagan, Xagorari, Schmidt, and Kruse. Are you 4 up to becoming collectively anything of consequence?

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03 Dec 09 21:05

Dear Maria, thank you very much for your attention ...
...sorry for my long respond ...
Yes, I'm after three independent individual exhibition ...

17 September - Museum in Usti nad Orlici - Czech Republic
20 November - Galeria M Odwach Wroclaw
25 November - The City Museum of Wroclaw
[LINK]http://www.mmw.pl/wystawy/wystawa_czasowa.php?id=189[/LINK]

little photo relation about my vernissages is on my site :
[LINK]http://mirekantoniewicz.webs.com/[/LINK]

welcome please

I with pleasure show text about my painting by Maria Dziedziniewicz
/my curator and good angel/

My space – an exhibition of paintings by Mirek Antoniewicz



The year is 1959. The Market Square in Wroclaw. A boy feeding pigeons. Overwhelming dullness: grey paving, grey pigeons, people in the street.

A moment captured.

The boy from the photo is present in all the paintings.

Treated like this, he ceases to exist as a pseudo self-portrait of the artist.


Information loses its meaning. The boy becomes a symbol.

The child figure is a point of reference, a record of past experiences, individual desires and expectations, an evocation of choices and limitations bringing back memories.

It is neither a story about the past, nor the artist’s memoir. It is a series of significant sequences; it evokes situations meaningful to the generation of the 1950s.

Looking back from the perspective of the present, it is an individual commentary on life revealing great distance and tinged with some irony. It becomes a question about the possibilities and conditions determining life choices.

The paintings, which seem to be similar, undergo a vital, but smooth transformation.

Differences in facial expression, clothing, a whole range of additional props describing the situation being commented on, have their source both in real experience and in fiction.

The boy is identified through the roles he plays. The event presented gets stronger, provokes questions and awaits interpretation.

The whole series of paintings is maintained in almost identical tonality. The dominance of grey supplemented with warm browns emphasizes the meaning of time passing.

A blue accent, a line or a spot softens the use of colour in the paintings.

Blue has always been present in the artist’s work. It symbolises life, time, the painter’s accent of determination and hope...

The paintings may encourage us to direct, private reception and dialogue.

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03 Dec 09 21:40

My generale reflection:
yes I'm happy...because I'm 70 % paralised after crash on motocycle
and all moments my contact with my public and moments of showing my pictures is my holly days.

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04 Dec 09 02:02

Congratulations Mirek. The attention is very well deserved.
I'm very sorry to hear of your accident and injuries, I hope the damage is not permanent. Best of luck.

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04 Dec 09 13:02

Congratulations Mirek, and I am very sorry to hear about your condition too. I too hope injuries are not permanent and wish you the best.

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04 Dec 09 13:11

JP, I think you are not right in saying this. But let's take this conversation outside, let's say in the forum room.

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04 Dec 09 13:59

Hello Maria... I'm glad to say that you are correct, and I was quite wrong in my statement, as Mirek has kindly shown. Apologies to you both. There's no need to bring this to the forum.
I add my voice to the concerned people that you recover fully and quickly from your accident, Mirek.

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04 Dec 09 14:24

Thanks for nice words and finish please. For the first time is these photo and have spoken about wheelchair. I think It's good theme for wizards :)

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18 Dec 09 23:51

complimenti mirek! elenashirin

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08 Jan 10 09:28

I'm inviting to see few impression
[LINK]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmDeqT0-giA[/LINK]

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08 Jan 10 17:29

A very impressive presentation and extremely well done, not just as a commemorative video of the event but it furthered my admiration for your work by allowing me see it more clearly. I wish I could have seen it in the flesh so to speak but I have a much better sense of it now.

The extent and scope of your effort, conceptual in nature, was pushed to the limit. That's something we talk a lot about here on AP but seldom see. I hadn't realized the varying scales, abundance of imagination and quantity of work on this theme. The video also showed just how well executed it all is.

Once again Mirek, I hope you can find a way to keep working and wish you continued success.

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09 Jan 10 14:58

I was about to say something here but Hillel cover me completely. Well done Mirek and one day we will talk about this conceptual nature of your work wich interests me too very much.

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12 Jul 10 20:37

what it is,is great!

Dove on the street
Dove on the street
Dove on the street

my memory to Tadeusz Kantor /death 8 December 1990/ and last drawing was doves/

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25 Apr 10 16:32

good work
congratulations

rooster dancing in the carnival....
rooster dancing in the carnival....
rooster dancing in the carnival....

my fresh picture

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10 Sep 15 04:02

I really enjoy the dream-like vision of this piece. The chicken reminds me of how Obatala created the world with a pile of dirt and a chicken to scratch it. Bravo !