kατ- the opening of the exhibition of Wojciech Sumara

KATA is a prefix derived from the Greek κτ. It can mean: down, on the contrary, back. There is no single word in the Polish language that has its full, analogous meaning. However, we find the prefix itself in words such as: cataclysm, catastrophe, catatonia or catacombs. The vast majority of words in which this prefix appears carry negative connotations. It was this semantic characterization that became the starting point for this cycle. It was created in a period accompanied by growing pessimism and a sense of uncertainty. Drawings are largely a record of this state, a visual trace of emotions. Anger, fear, disappointment, feelings of powerlessness or indifference permeate and create the atmosphere of the whole cycle.

“The series, inspired by many specific events, is not an attempt to illustrate a particular type of tragedy. Rather, it is a record of the mental state that arises in contact with reality oversaturated with images of disaster. Private experience meets images of mass culture, cinema, media and visual memory here. What is personal is collided with what is common. As a consequence, individual drawings begin to function as fragments of a larger puzzle. They are successive episodes of the same tension: between fascination and rejection, beauty and ugliness, innocence and violence, reality and its image. And at the intersection of these extremes, a visual manifesto of contemporary pessimism is created,” says the artist, Wojciech Sumara

Wojciech Sumara was born and lives in Krakow. For more than a dozen years he developed his interests in painting and drawing in the studio run by the Krakow artist Małgorzata Kruczkowska-Olszewska. In 2019, he began his studies at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, majoring in painting. He studied in the laboratories of Prof. Zbigniew Bajek, Prof. Adam Brincken, Prof. Grzegorz Bienias and Prof. Grzegorz Sztni. In 2024, he defended his master's thesis entitled “Damage”.

Free admission

The exhibition can be viewed until 30 October 2026 during the opening hours of the Forge.