Robert Szczerbowski (b.1959) is a Polish interdisciplinary artist whose diverse and highly individual practice resists easy categorization. He studied philosophy in the 1980s and began his artistic creativity around the same time in literature. In early work, he explored the boundaries of language and narrative, employing experimental forms of writing. He is the author of books including The Book of Life (1990), Æ (1991), Compositions (1991). In 1995, he pioneered the publication of Polish literary texts in digital form (hypertext Æ, 2nd ed.). His works are found in museums and private collections.
Since the mid-1990s, Szczerbowski has devoted himself exclusively to visual art. Working in various media (paintings, objects, installations, video), he addresses issues related to the cultural consequences of digital transformation. He focuses on human identity and consciousness in the context of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the emerging social media. His works reveal the complex relationship between humans and technology, raising questions about the boundaries of subjectivity and consciousness in the contemporary world.
In his ouvre, he builds coherent, autonomous narrative worlds that transcend the conventional definitions of individual media. He utilizes the aesthetics and language of advanced technologies. In paintings, the artist references the structures of fractal geometry and biometric facial recognition systems. In objects and installations, he employs programming languages, transforming their specialized codes into carriers of cultural and symbolic meaning.
In 1997, Robert Szczerbowski received a grant from the Polish Culture Foundation to implement a new project that entered the field of visual art. Two exhibitions: A Retrospective at the end of Time (1997) was a catalog of a non-existent exhibition. This bilingual publication contained only illustrations—photographs of objects and their descriptions.
Based on this catalogue, a real exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw under the same title was reconstructed in 1998. The subtitle, "A Retrospective at the end of Time," concealed the mystification that most of these works had never been publicly displayed before. The project seemed to be a recapitulation, or rather, a historical retrospective, of human spiritual culture to date in the context of the new era of information, technology, and science. Although deeply rooted in references to the external world of culture, it ultimately referred to the inner sphere of human experience—the domain of mind, memory, and spirituality.
After 2000, Robert Szczerbowski turned to painting, also creating video works.
Fractal paintings (2000-2003) originated at the intersection of painting and technology to explore virtual reality, a new dimension brought by the digital age. Discovering the potential of fractal geometry for art, Szczerbowski draws these virtual structures into the real world and materializes them as painterly subjects. He is inspired by the similarity of forms created as a result of purely mathematical operations and using a machine (but not AI) to astonishing motifs, often psychedelic, known from the sphere of human imagination, which have previously manifested themselves in, among others, art and religion.
The artist calls his works "cybercanvases" and adds: "A machine, calculating a fractal, thinks digitally. A human, painting a fractal, thinks analogue. In this process takes part a subjective factor related to an individual gesture, a sense of color, an error, etc."
In turn, in a series of portraits titled ID (Identity) from 2020, rendered in grayscale, he evokes ubiquitous facial recognition technology. He develops the motif of the pixelated image, which first appeared in his Self-Portrait from 2002. In this series, Szczerbowski broadly addresses the topic of identity across media, evoking its various variants.
His video productions, created between 2004 and 2006, were based on digital processing and found footage. They constitute a critical response to contemporary visual perception, shaped by an overabundance of stimuli and information in the media that leaves no room for the imagination.
The recent exhibition from 2026, titled I AM AI, brings together three fictional exhibits, iconic objects where sacred texts meet machine code and the digital world of AI. It is the artist's vision of a world in which the line between the organic and the digital, between what is real and simulation, is blurred, and questions about transcendence and identity become disturbingly important.
Solo exhibitions
I AM AI AT Gallery, Poznań 2026, ID Pola Magnetyczne, Warsaw 2020, Immortal Pola Magnetyczne, Warsaw 2018, Movie show AT Gallery, Poznań 2007, Recent works WAA Gallery, Warsaw 2006, Movies Kino Lab CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2006, Art as simulacrum, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2003, Algorithms AT Gallery, Poznań 2003, Fractal paintings Gallery XX1, Warsaw 2003, Steel Life and Venus without qualities Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw 2000, A Retrospective for the end of Time Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 1998
Some of group shows
Your Neigbor As Yourself Pola Magnetyczne, Warszawa 2022, Metamorphosis Pola Magnetyczne, Warszawa 2019, What they call my shadow, here on earth is my true substance CACBM, Paris 2019, Moving images Awangarda Gallery, BWA Wrocław 2015, Projection Propaganda Machine Open’er Festival, Gdynia 2013, Sick art Jerozolima, Warsaw 2012, Koans MCS Elektrownia, Radom 2009, Movie Show Rewizje, Warsaw 2007, Cinema Movie Kino Lab CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2007, Flesztival Aperitif 2007 SWPS Warsaw 2007, Mobile Academy: On the perfect illusion - Acoustic simulacra Warsaw 2006, From the archive of polish experimental film Baltic Center, Gotland 2006, Reading-rooms BUW, Warsaw 2006, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. Philosophical margins Oko/Ucho Gallery, Poznań 2006, Inc. Program Gallery, Warsaw 2004; BWA Zielona Gora 2004, Alphabet AT Gallery, Poznań 2004, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. Philosophical margins CCA Warsaw 2004, Reverse Art and Engineering Skulpturens Hus Gallery, Stockholm, 2004, Bookmorning, Galeria Dzialan, Warsaw 2003, Aporias BWA Jelenia Gora 2002, BWA Zielona Gora 2002, Irreligia Atelier 340 Muzeum, Brussels 2001, Text, Buch, Kunst Frankfurt 2000, Current Practices, Mobile Horizons CCA Warsaw 1999, Letter Word Sentence Fort Sztuki, Kraków 1998
Publications
Anthology Ha!art, Kraków 2013, A Retrospective for the End of Time (a catalogue of a non-existent exhibition), Warsaw 1997, Hermetic writings Hieratic Press, Warsaw 1996, Æ, hypertext for a computer reader Pusty Obłok 1996, Compositions (1977-81) KS Warsaw 1991, Æ (1985-90) KS, Warsaw 1991, The Book of Life (1979-85) Iskry, Warsaw 1990
