MARCIN DUDEK
ARTIST STATEMENT
Marcin Dudek explores the politics of identity and space, conflating hooliganism, memory and the architecture of social experience. An autobiographical dialogue with his own past underpins this discussion, retracing teenage experiences as a member of an infamously violent Krakow football fanclub. Dudek’s practice spans performance, sculpture, installation and painting, repurposing salvaged materials to interrogate the psychology of group dynamics in the stadium and beyond. His research ties his personal archive to a broader history of society’s inseparable relationship to spectacle, whilst seeking an artistic vocabulary for fragmented memory, violence and trauma.
BIO
Dudek (b. 1979, Krakow) studied at the University of Art Mozarteum, Salzburg, and Central Saint Martins, London, graduating in 2005 and 2007 respectively.
Forthcoming solo exhibitions include Marcin Dudek, Leto Gallery, Warsaw, Poland (2024); Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany (2024); OOF Gallery, London, UK (2024); and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania (2024).
Recent solo exhibitions include “AKUMULATORY”, IKOB Museum, Eupen, Belgium (2023); “The Group”, Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium (2023); “NEOPLAN”, Edel Assanti, London, UK (2023); “Ultraskraina”, Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris, France (2021); “Akumulator”, Edel Assanti, London, UK (2019); “The Crowd Man”, MWW Wrocław Contemporary Museum, Wrocław, Poland (2019); “The Lure of the Arena”, MNAC National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania (2019); “Steps and Marches”, Edel Assanti, London, UK & “Harlan Levey Projects”, Brussels, Belgium (2017).
Selected group exhibitions include “Art of the Terraces”, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK (2022); “Collapsing”, TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain (2022); “8th Biennial of Painting”, Museum Deinze and Museum Roger Ravel, Deinze, Belgium (2022); “FUCK YOU”, Kunstenhuis Haralbeke, Belgium (2021); “DOPPELGANGER”, Entreprendre & “KANAL-Centre Pompidou”, Brussels, Belgium (2021); “Psychic Wounds: On Art & Trauma, The Warehouse, Dallas, USA (2020); Giochi Senza Frontiere, Palazzo Mazzarino”, Manifesta12, Palermo, Italy (2018).
Dudek’s immersive installation “The Cathedral of Human Labor”, 2013, is on permanent view at the Verbeke Foundation, Antwerp. His work is included in international collections including MWW Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wrocław, Poland, and National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Bucharest, Romania. Marcin Dudek lives and works in Brussels.
Tribunalia, wood, matches, fabric, stone, bones, hair, smoke grenade, approx. 10 mins, performance at Palazzo Vermexio on the occasion of the exhibition "Story yet to be told" Courtesy of the artist and Harlan Levey Projects
Tacitus charts the crowd’s road to violence: what began as taunts
between Nucerians and Pompeians became shouted abuse, which grew into stone-throwing, and ended with swords and knives. 1
Marcin Dudek’s Tribunalia is part of the artist’s ongoing investigation into the psychology and rituals of football stadiums. Intrigued by Pompeï’s ancient amphitheatre, which, while in ruins, closely resembles the Polish stadiums of the ‘90s, Dudek reconstructs its architecture using wood and matches inside the courtyard of the Palazzo Vermexio. The matches are akin to bobbing heads crowded around a spectacle, and are placed according to Dudek’s memory of crowds in his home stadium. This maquette is placed on top of a hollow construction, which is then inhabited by the artist in the manner of a puppeteer hiding below the Stage. As visitors surround the stadium, Dudek reenacts the rituals of the spectacle, the sounds and gestures of a more and more agitated public.
In the process, the artist depicts the struggle of an individual being swallowed by the mass, and reflects on the complex nature of crowd
violence.
1 Garrett G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p.94.