I started to draw early, in childhood. The majority of my life was around the art. I was in artistic secondary and high school, then fine arts academy and now PhD degree in art.
2. How did you meet Metal music?, What is the meaning of Metal for you?
I’ve got to know metal music when I was a teenager, I was about 13 or 14 years old. I was searching for powerful, sublime music, something like Wagner, and I’ve found it in Metal. I didn’t have happiness to start in Metal in its golden times; at that times unfortunately nu metal was on the top (but I didn’t like it, with a few exceptions). I’ve started from Rammstein, through the metal classics, then death metal, epic metal, and ending with black metal.
Metal is like a kind of spiritual feeling, an act of transgression and kathartic experience. It is powerful, it gives a sense of strength. Listening, and especially playing metal is an unique experience, something out of humanity, transcending the weakness into titanic power; becoming someone else.
3. What are your main inspirations at the time to produce your obscure art?
I have many inspirations, it depends of theme of artwork, which I have to create. There was war, science, postapocalypse, nature, melancholia, alchemy, philosophy… It depends on what I create, the aim of artworks and what I want to express.
4. What kind of special techniques do you use to draw?
I am multidisciplinar artist. In my art I use many techniques and I still search for something new. I make paintings, drawings, photography, printmaking (woodcut, lithography, etching etc), installations, new media, graphic design and music… Techniques of drawing? There are too many of them to write it down there, haha!
5. Is there any kind of special or personal feeling that you want to express?, what feeling and why?
I want to express my thoughts by the art, and in the opposite way, think by the creation of art; creating art is an cognitive process. The best way to find interesting ideas is to start to create, they will come to mind themselves. Art can express wide spectrum of feelings; but rather than express the feelings, I want to evoke feelings and thoughts from me and viewer. Art is a kind of catalyst. Behind every work are lots of theories, philosophical background, and some senses about which I don’t want to talk directly and maybe some senses with a few meanings that I don't even realize.
6. With what artists/bands/labels, etc, did you have work?
I rather rarely work with bands and labels. I made few covers for band Nuclear Thorn, and I made some translations for R’Lyeh zine. I made visual identification for Under The Black Sun festival, and I made some posters for smaller concerts. I also worked with classical musicians - posters and photo sessions. That’s if about metal (and music in general). I mainly work as an independent artist.
7. What are the main/highlight works you have made?
One of my main works is the cycle about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki named “The Radiance of a Thousand Suns”. It was monumental cycle of monochromatic lithographs, installations, objects, video and music; if can be defined as Gesamtkunstwerk. It was about annihilation, crossing the gates of nothingness, kind of revelation of destructive power. Creating this was interesting experience, revealing a lot of meanings. Last year I made some artworks about the meaning of substance, alchemy, radioactivity and origin of universe.
8. In what would you say, you difference your own art from other artists?
I think that in definition artists should be different and constantly strive to be different. My difference? I always want to go by my own patch and searching something new. I try to do many things, and I have artworks in many different styles, I don’t like to stuck in one point.
9. What about the deals to work with you? What do you ask for? (money, trade stuff only)
I rather make artworks for a money, trade stuff occasionally. I mainly cooperate with art galleries.
10. Do you work with your art also for other sectors aside of Metal, can you make it professionally?
Yes, I mainly make my art for sectors aside of Metal and I made it profesionally. I mainly create fine art for gallery shows and artistic open calls, sometimes I lead artistic workshops (calligraphy, photography and others). I had 19 solo exhibitions, and lots of group exhibition, some works I also exhibited abroad, in Portugal, France, Belgium, UK, Croatia, Bulgaria, Taiwan and Japan. Nowadays I make typical metal artworks rather occasionally.
11. Speaking about your Metal scene, what bands, distros, labels, zines and other artists, can you recommend?
Polish metal scene nowadays is very strong, there is lots of broadly known bands, and active underground. From zines I can recomment R’lyeh zine (polish language) – with many interesting interviews, articles and reviews, and excellent feuilletons, leaded like as professional magazine. From English language zines from Poland I can recommend Necroscope zine, which is like as underground metal encyclopaedia and is released twice a year. Another good polish zines are: Infernal Death, Wolfpack (already not released, active in early 2000’s), Chaos Vault, Tribal Convicions, Oldschool Metal Maniac and others. There are some good labels, Old Temple, Mythrone, Mad Lion, Arachnophobia (already almost closed), the big and known Agonia records any many others. The known label is also Witching Hour, but lastly it begin more and more rip off. An interesting label is Pionierska Records. It’s rather not metal label, but worth to be mentioned. It is experimental label, now specialized in floppy releases, the records are releasing of floppy disks in low editions .This labels releases new stuff very frequently, one new title a week. In general the floppy disk as a music carrier is very rare, there have been released just a bit over thousand music floppys all time. A floppy label concentrated on metal is Dangerous Diskettes (from Germany). BTW in the summer I plan to release my ambient and experimental music works on floppy with Pionierska Records.
The most known artists creating metal cover are Rosław Szaybo (died in 2019) – known of f.e. cover of Judas Priest’s “British Steel” and Zbigniew Bielak – made f. e. covers of Watain’s “Lawless Darkness”, Zhrine and Ghost. An artist, who’s art liked by polish metalhead and known abroad is Zdzisław Beksiński. His son, Tomasz Beksiński was radio presenter, very important for polish gothic culture. You can see history of Zdzisław and Tomasz Beksiński in movie “The Last Family”.
As an interesting thing I can mention is that nowadays in contemporary established young art are popular extreme metal themes.
12. Last words and contact!
Thank you for the interview! Keep Metal mighty!
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