Robert Florczak, Pride
Cycle: 7 Deadly Sins
Acrylic paint on advertising banner, steel frame, scythe, circular saw.
Work signed,
Dimensions: 280 x 280 cm
Year of creation: 2010
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Object Pride - from the series 7 Deadly Sins.
The perversity of this work has several layers. It is painted on a banner advertising condoms. On close inspection, one can read the words "mind your own business" on the left side. This is a suggestion that in the pursuit of minding our own business, we can succumb to the dangerous, seductive - and, as has proven in the past, pernicious - power of symbols of authority and strength. The sin of pride is to become enamored with the appearances of power and beauty, which often bring humiliation to others but also one's own downfall. The banner is painted in a violent and expressive manner. Scythes are transformed into wings, and the use of a chipped circular saw as a laurel wreath conquers a sense of brutal aggression that tempts with its bestial power.
It was created in 2000 as the first of the 7 Deadly Sins Series. First presented at a habilitation exhibition at the Gdansk Academy of Fine Arts.
Participated as a mobile (on steel wheels from an old agricultural machine) in the opening performance of the renovated St. John's Art Center in Gdansk in 2011. The multimedia performance Temple of All Arts staged by Robert Florczak. Robert Florczak for the performance Temple of All Arts and the performance Triumph of the Fire of Bodies and Machines received the Pomeranian Art Award in 2012.
Presented as a banner at the Kunstraum Kieswerk in Weil am Rhein, Germany, during the 2015 Kieswerk Open Air Festival
Presented as a mobile object at the exhibition "Robert Florczak Retrospective, Recycling, Remix" at the Sopot State Art Gallery in 2018.
Link to an excerpt from the show
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Robert Florczak. Born in 1955 in Warsaw, Poland. Graduated from the State Higher School of Fine Arts (now the Academy of Fine Arts) in Gdansk, graduated from the Faculty of Painting in 1988, habilitated in 2009. From 1990 to 2010 he was an assistant at the Drawing Studio, and currently runs the Art in Public Space studio at the Faculty of Painting. He is a recipient of the Pomeranian Marshal's Theater Award, the Sopot Muse Award and the Pomeranian Art Award. He has performed in the USA, Brazil, China, Germany, France, Turkey, Lithuania and Latvia. He has produced dozens of performances, including outdoor and multimedia, several short films, three monumental sculptures/objects, and 19 years of running the SFINKS club and gallery.
"In art I am not looking for perfection or revolution, I am looking for an adventure sanctioned by a subjective sense of beauty. My painting pedigree is very important to me, but in fact I am a mongrel in whose blood a rapid stream flows: sculpture, performance, theater, film and even architecture or interiors. I lick everything I encounter on my path as an artist with the carelessness of a toddler. I have an obvious penchant for monumentalism and pushing apart, if not beyond, the framework. In recent years, my favorite painting substrate has been an advertising banner, to which I give new meanings with all the familiar wealth of painterly means. In this way, painterly recycling counterattacks marketing arts. Years ago I fell in love with a scythe. In front of the marten furnace I certainly saved more than four hundred beautiful slender reapers. From them I create steel wings and eagles."
