I've been living in somebody's dream​
Exhibition: Contrast Gallery, Warsaw, 2018

link to text writen by Stach Szabłowski
link to text writen by Grzegorz Borkowski

The starting point of the narrative is the period of collaboration between Kiełbowicz and the Brussels-based Roberto Polo Gallery, and in particular the time spent as an artist-in-residence in the house of a countess, the art dealer's partner. Together with another Polish creator, Tomasz Partyka, for a month they were supposed to stay in confinement, like renaissance painters, to admire the beauty of the surrounding nature. As a result, the idyllic landscape quickly turned into an oppressive scenery, and the inability to get out of the golden cage only intensified the impression of alienation and derealization.
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 The entire complex, which consisted of many hectares of gardens and a house, was built in the 80s. The main inspiration for the interior design and architecture was the world of dreams that haunted the owner in childhood. The whole created, therefore, a unique, emotional, oneiric character, reflecting deeply hidden fascinations and fears of the founder. Wooden slide houses in the shape of birds, waxen heads and mannequins, enormous beds suspended from the ceiling, as well as numerous collections of photographs depicting the world and the bygone life caused that the painter was practically thrown into someone else's completely incomprehensible reality.
 

"Birds" 70 x 50 cm, photo print, 2015.

"3" 180 x 160 cm, 2018, oil and crayon on canvas.

"1" 180 x 160cm, 2017, oil and crayon on canvas. Private collection

Gallery Contrast, exhibition wiev.

​"Study of a belgian landscape", 200 x 180cm, 2015, oil on canvas.

The starting point for the exhibition were the Belgian hedges separating the rich estates, the feeling of alienation, the awareness that somewhere behind them is a life to which I have no access: someone plays tennis, swims in the pool, organizes a party or plays with children, etc. A hedge, despite its elegance, still remains a wall. It also symbolizes the borders in Europe, separating, and the fact that Europe is slowly changing into an open-air museum, where tourists come to see monuments but the rest is inaccessible, the inhabitants are not very polite, closed, withdrawn and distrustful. On the other hand, painting itself was a kind of a wall for me, and I'm constantly facing it.

"sand castles" 200 x 180 cm, 2016, oil on canvas, private collection.

(…) After three weeks, I escaped for a day to the sea to Ostend, where, apart from wide outflows, the main tourist attraction was a park of sand castles. The park was surrounded by a high wall, so that only those who pay could see the structures in their entirety. I thought that was the perfect metaphor of my situation. I felt like the whole world and my whole life was behind the wall of the countess's hedge. The castles were the promises and dreams I had. It is also a metaphor of the situation of a young artist from poor Poland; a cheap, talented and hardworking artist, who for the rich Belgians is a certain attraction, a toy. He is promised such castles and access to the great world of art while in reality, he’s an intruder and someone foreign. I believe that not all our dreams should come true. Sand castles can be treated as a collection of little utopias, a record of what people know about architecture, how they imagine the building of their dreams; some resemble Walt Disney palaces, medieval castles, bizarre cathedrals or minimalistic forms.

"important moments" 200 x 180 cm, 2016, oil on canvas

My father, who is a photographer, gave me contact sheets - boards with developed films, from which he once chose the best ones suitable for printing in a larger format. I was wondering how you can encapsulate someone's life in one big picture. Initially, I painted these boards, juxtaposed together; there were different moments of my father's life. Tags symbolizing that the selected frame is suitable for enlargement were stuck to each of the sheets. I thought that was the essence, the most important moments, that I really didn’t know much about the past, that I had no idea what was going on there and that it was best to paint over everything, leaving only the tags that were the essence. I wanted to paint a picture of what I know and what I do not know about someone's life.

"copybook", 40 x 30 cm, 2016, oil on canvas. Private collection

"Bierges", 18 x 13 cm, photo print. Private collection.

"landscape" 100 x 60 cm, 2015, acrylic on canvas.