Konik Film Studio is run by the artistic duo: Katarzyna Zimnoch and Paweł Kleszczewski. They work in the fields of visual arts, new media, painting and animated film. They are present both in gallery spaces and at film festivals.
The exhibition at the National Museum in Szczecin compiles the work of the recent ten years. We will see paintings, animations and video productions, drawings, graphics, monotypes, miniatures, textures, installations and computer graphics prints. It will be possible to become familiar with the filmmaking process and its particular stages. There will be the opportunity to compare storyboards and fragments of animatics. Film and animation by KONIK STUDIO mean the use of such material as paint and board, not a narrative medium and mass entertainment. They are artistic and experimental films. They go beyond storytelling to create fantastic images full of symbols and archetypes. Experimentation has led them to develop their own technique, a combination of glass painting and computer animation.
Three of the most important productions that have won recognition at numerous festivals have been selected for the exhibition: Broken Tale (2014-2016), the Ajtia series (2018-2023), In The Beginning Was Water (2017-2022) together with paintings by Paweł Kleszczewski. These are milestones on the KONIK STUDIO collective's timeline. Each of them is an extended project, circling or opening up various new areas and components.
"In the beginning was painting", according to Paweł Kleszczewski also the creation process of the film begins with painting. Before the animated films appeared, the first painting series presented at the exhibition, Desires (2012), was being created. Emotions found a spontaneous outlet in wild, instinctive painting. In the following years, parallelly to the animation work, more series were created: Covid, Ukraine, Belarus, Peace-less and Global Crisis. Paweł Kleszczewski's expressionist painting shows the workings of primal instincts, as well as fears and threats in confrontation with the contemporary global civilisation of consumption, crises, war, famine, epidemics, the invasion of "the others". We will see walls densely covered with pictures painted in haste, without care for aesthetics, in various formats, often without stretcher bars, on random, recycled materials.
The light and dark side of life, humanity and nature are areas of interest for the artistic duo. They look for inspiration in myths and folklore, fairy tales and legends, anthropology and religious studies, depth psychology, symbols and archetypes, as well as in the landscape and local people's stories of unusual places. Broken Tale is a story of light wandering in the darkness of a dense, black forest, inspired by a Swedish folk tale, the work of Swedish artist John Bauer.
Creation (2018), the first animation depicting the cosmogonic myth of the Slavs, is based on folk tales and historical studies. Floating alone on the sea, God meets the devil. Together they take up creating the world, quickly coming into conflict. The film begins a series of animations based on eitiological folk tales, full of humour and folk wisdom: Story about why Devil Limps (2019), Mushrooms, Grain, Stork, Stones, Bear (2022-2023).
Water and the strong contrasts of white and black are repeated motifs appearing in further animations: white God and black devil (Creation), black and white swan (In The Beginning Was Water). Water is a symbol of chaos, changeability, transformation, the source of life and death. It is identified with knowledge and memory latent in the subconscious. It was conceived as prima materia. It is also the main theme, the setting of the two abovementionned films.
Kasia Zimnoch and Paweł Kleszczewski are from Szczecin and studied together at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. In 2012 they went on holiday to Cavan in Ireland and stayed there for 6 years. There they founded Konik Studio. Since 2018 they have been living in Szczecin again; this is where their current studio is located in Dąbie district. They have been curating at the Delta Club for the past two years, organising exhibitions of both renown and distinguished artists as well as completely unknown debut ones.
by Joanna Łozowska
KONIK STUDIO timeline
October 13th – December 10th 2023
vernissage: October 12th 2023, 6.00 P.M.
The National Museum in Szczecin – the Museum of Contemporary Art
ul. Staromłyńska 1
Artists: Paweł Kleszczewski, Katarzyna Zimnoch
Curator: Joanna Łozowska
Associate Curator: Magdalena Lewoc
The KONIK STUDIO Timeline exzhibition is accompanied by a catalogue edited by Paweł Kleszczewski and Katarzyna Zimnoch in cooperation with the National Museum in Szczecin, published within “Mecenat kulturalny Miasta Szczecin” 2023, the City of Szczecin support programme for culture
The exhibition is also accompanied by educational events, including:
Exhibition guided tour held by Katarzyna Zimnoch and Paweł Kleszczewski
October 21st 2023, 12.00-14.00
Meeting within Szczecin Film Festival; the Konik Studio group has been related to Szczecin Film Festival since 2019. Their films have been presented in “West-Pomeranian Short” category during several recent editions of the festival, winning awards and honorary mentions.
- KONIK STUDIO timeline / Katarzyna Zimnoch, Paweł Kleszczewski
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- KONIK STUDIO timeline / Katarzyna Zimnoch, Paweł Kleszczewski
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- KONIK STUDIO timeline / Katarzyna Zimnoch, Paweł Kleszczewski
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- KONIK STUDIO timeline / Katarzyna Zimnoch, Paweł Kleszczewski
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- KONIK STUDIO timeline / Katarzyna Zimnoch, Paweł Kleszczewski
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- KONIK STUDIO timeline / Katarzyna Zimnoch, Paweł Kleszczewski
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- KONIK STUDIO timeline / Katarzyna Zimnoch, Paweł Kleszczewski
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