Mariusz Tarkawian (b. 1983, Lublin)
A student in the Fine Arts Department of Maria Curie Sklodowska University (Lublin), a drawer and, in his own words, “a careful observer”. Tarkawian is the author of both small-scale drawings, frequently complemented with humorous and mildly ironic commentary, and mural-sized visual narratives. Typically, his drawings are steeped in the moment of their own inception, in the snatches of overheard conversations and everyday occurrences. It is then that his intimate and inimitable sketches, filtered through his own experience, come into being. Sometimes his figures are rendered bodyless, almost abstract, with only a subtle contour of some select body parts.
Tarkawian was discovered in 2005 by the Lublin-based Biala Gallery and quickly made a name for himself as a young, gifted artist, whose works are shown at major art festivals around the world, becoming in their own right valuable additions to gallery collections and private collectors alike in Germany, the USA and Poland.
Select solo and group exhibitions:
2011 Works, Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Słupsk, Poland
2011 Mariusz Tarkawian, Dariusz Kociński Live Act, 14th Media Art Biennale, Wrocław, Poland
2010 Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain
2010 Ars Homo Erotica, National Museum in Warsaw/The Gallery of the 20th-century Polish Art, Warsaw, Poland
2010 Drawings, Kunstsaele, Berlin, Germany
2010 Everyday Ideologies -Zeitläufe, Lebenswege, Art Museum, Magdeburg, Germany
2009 Czego sztuka szuka w biurze?, Biała Gallery, Lublin, Poland
2009 Fragile – Terres d’empathie, Musée d’Art moderne de Saint-Etienne, Saint Etienne, France
2009 Photoplasticon – Plastic Adventures with Photography – Zona Sztuki Aktualnej, Lodz, Poland
2009 My secret drawings, Ursula Walbröl Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany
2008 Mediations, Biennale, Poznan, Poland
2008 Establishment, Centre For Contemporary Art – Ujazdowski Castle, Warszawa, Poland
2008 5TM The Young Triennial, Orońsko, Poland
2008 General Reconstruction, Biała Gallery, Lublin, Poland