Michal Minor (b. 1979), Summa necessitas, 2021.
oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm, framed
Born in 1979 in Zabrze, graduate of the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice where he works as a teacher with the title of professor of art. In the years 2000-2020, he participated in more than 250 collective exhibitions at home and abroad, and is the author of more than a dozen solo exhibitions. He mainly works in painting, drawing and printmaking, and designs posters. His works are in museum collections and private collections. He admits that he feels strongly connected to Silesia, which has had a strong influence on the language of his artistic expression. One of the stimuli for his work, for example, is his specific sense of humor, which he describes as "balancing on the border between what is real and what is between words," and the stigma of the Silesian dialect, especially in terms of its reduced articulation, also makes one of his inspirations, driven by sentiment and a kind of fascination. In his art he transforms the influences of expressionism and the poetics of street graffiti, the predatory nature of his canvases and the dynamics under the sign of comic narrative, bring to mind the precursor of this field, Jean - Michel Basquiat. The choice of means of expression is justified by the need to contest the surrounding reality, the attitude of involvement in current social ills, the collapse of values and the savagery of customs. The stylistics of his works is also close to the expression of the paintings of Roman Nyga, one of the important representatives of Silesian painting, who made his debut in the 1960s. Minor stipulates that, contrary to appearances, he values the old masters, keeps returning to them and rediscovering them. He also emphasizes the value of the academy, which is often depreciated today, and its importance in building creative awareness and broadening horizons. "Art for me is a trick. For me, art is to do 'something'. The art for me is to take a rabbit out of a hat. It is not art to sit in a gallery and start peeling potatoes or come with a saber and destroy portraits of Nazis. And it's no longer an art to pursue overused Holocaust issues or quasi-scandalizing themes about homosexuals for the radical Polish backyard, or to make typological works that consist of someone ripping off fragments of a film from youtube with the caption "The end" and making a found foutage out of it. The trick is to do the trick. Show that you can do something in such a way that you get bowed to, because watching your work I realized that you sat there for a long time and did something with a brush in your hand that when I look at it, it's just chapeau bas! And that's why I thought to myself while watching that film about the Himalayan climbers, that's what art is, to transcend one's own limitations while maintaining control and prudence."
