Pawel Zablocki Polish-Canadian, b. 1960

Pawel Zablocki graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland (MFA) in 1987. He moved to Canada in 1988; worked as a painter, master printer and art restorer. Between 1991 and 1998, he studied Semiotics and Art History at the University of Toronto, actively participating in the creative efforts of the Graduate Center for the Study of Drama. Since 1994, he has been affiliated with Open Studio, where he makes prints and teaches.

Zablocki’s printmaking is the comprehensive exploration of traditional intaglio procedures, aiming to uncover their potential in relationship to contemporary aesthetics. To this end his artistic endeavour is defined in terms of the specifics of the techniques he is working with.

His prints are responses to the magic of everyday occurrences and the seductive power of intaglio technique. He is telling the story of entanglement of reality with the language of representation. The deliberate choice of near emblematic representations and compilations of those, is executed with an array techniques that are meant to create its own narrative interaction with the representation. This way the properties of visual language come forward and become the protagonists of his prints, taking charge of the way in which his prints can be perceived.

His creative process is fed by the accumulation of bizarre states of reception, in which the linear vocabulary, having presented, or just attempting to present particular objects, refuses to erase itself from the formula of representation and in consequence—signification. Such attitude is inspired by his studies of history of printmaking that offers significant lessons of struggle to grasp reality and discoveries of reality created by the visual language that struggles to embrace it (via).