Born in Warsaw, Jacek Jarnuszkiewicz hails from a family of sculptors—after World War II, his his grandfather took part in the famous reconstruction of the Polish capital. In 1964, the Jarnuszkiewicz family immigrated to Canada. Jacek studied at Concordia University...
Read MoreBorn in Warsaw, Jacek Jarnuszkiewicz hails from a family of sculptors—after World War II, his his grandfather took part in the famous reconstruction of the Polish capital. In 1964, the Jarnuszkiewicz family immigrated to Canada. Jacek studied at Concordia University and at the University of Montreal, where he would later teach visual arts.
The work of Jacek Jarnuszkiewicz has been presented in Wroclaw (Poland), at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal, at the Saõ Paulo Art Biennal (Brazil), at the Zachęta National Art Gallery in Warsaw and at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland. Since the 1990s, his solo exhibitions have been presented mainly in Montreal, but he is mostly known for his public art and his forays into land art.
Skilful at deconstructing the illusion of meaning and reality, Jacek Jarnuszkiewicz is one of those sculptors who, by questioning the boundaries of their experimental field, like to create objects of great visual and emotional tension. Aware that our appreciation of art is intertwined with a tradition that is unconscious to a large extent, the artist plays with ideas and images, with meanings (the visitor’s perceptions and the work’s semantic developments), and transforms his exhibitions into intellectual spars. Characterized by the strangeness of all discoveries, his creations are thought provoking and turn the viewer into an accomplice, as if their otherness were mere manifestations of a very old collective memory. Jacek Jarnuszkiewicz thus invites us to step on the other side of the mirror.
