Krzysztof Mętel
I am deeply interested in the creative process, the painterly gesture, and the relationship between painting and extra-pictorial discourses. In my work, I employ montage and appropriation. I often work with salvaged objects—items of uncertain status, such as a sun-bleached military tarp or an illustration in a biometric passport serving as a backdrop for barely discernible tariff stamps.
I enjoy the process of discovering forms that are appropriate for the chosen theme or material. For this reason, my works are often organized into series framed around a particular theme, leitmotif, or formal solution. I am not attached to a single mode of depiction, yet common threads can be traced across seemingly different series.
I am moved by the effort of others that has gone to waste. Coming from a city that was repeatedly destroyed and lost many valuable monuments, I have always approached ruins and traces of others’ work with tenderness. Currently, I work with failed and rejected paintings—another stage of engaging with salvaged objects, this time altered by other painters, while my own unsuccessful canvases complete the collection. By intervening in their shape, format, or composition and adding further layers of paint—while always allowing traces of the original solutions to remain visible—I reach a point where unstable constructions begin to stabilize.
A key reference for this practice is the sport I once pursued competitively. I compare the process of confronting works affected by failure to a relay race: a second attempt after an initial failure, or scoring a goal in added time. My recent works explore themes shared by both sport and art: spectacle, success and failure, discipline, competition, and arbitrage.
My practice is characterized by a strong contextualization of the subjects I address and a focus on what usually lies at the periphery of vision, easily overlooked. I value irony and emphasize the intertextual nature of my paintings, while also questioning authorship, originality, and the uniqueness of the artwork.
krzysiek.m.metel@gmail.com
Krzysztof Mętel (b. 1993) is a painter and a PhD graduate of the University of the Arts in Poznań. During his studies, he participated in a student exchange at Shanghai Normal University. His first solo exhibition, entitled Anaesthetics, was held in a rented doctor’s office at a local public clinic in Plac Kolegiacki, Poznań. He was a resident artist at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk in 2019 and, together with Mateusz Piestrak, co-founded the artist-run space Pani Domu (The Lady of the House) in 2021.
Mętel is the author of the book Każdy kończy, kiedy mu się podoba (Everyone Finishes When They Please), published by the Contemporary Art Gallery in Opole and Disastra Publishing in 2024. The book is divided into two parts: the first features texts on his latest series of works, a catalogue of works, and photographs from exhibitions; the second contains nine in-depth interviews conducted by Mętel with prominent younger-generation artists, focusing on their use of montage, collage, and assemblage in practice.
He is currently employed at his alma mater.
