INFLATALES. Oskar Zięta’s Steel Stories

The latest exhibition of the famous artist of the young generation, the internationally recognized Oskar Zięta, is organized at the GAGA MOS Architecture Gallery in Krakow at 12 Rajska St. GAGA MOS Architecture Gallery, 12, Rajska St., Kraków, 22nd October – 29th November 2020

The exhibition is part of the 10th-anniversary celebrations of Zięta's artistic activity. It is a mixture of science and passion, scenic mystery and literal references to the theatrical traditions of the place where it will be presented.

The exhibition "INFLATALES. Steel tales by Oskar Zięta” leads the viewer through theatrical meanders into the world of Zięta's work, revealing the backstage of the creative force and the essence of the exhibited objects and sculptures. Here, the border becomes as ephemeral as the transitions between the individual scenes the exhibition is built of. For once, we come across a stage in which the main character is a chair, and in a moment we find ourselves inside a living installation transporting the viewer to the world of mirages, reflections and light collages.

As a motto of the show, Zieta has chosen the Stanisław Lem’s words, whose 100th birthday we will celebrate in 2021. The rhetorical question “How can you not transform if you can transform?” taken from The Star Diaries makes a reference to the nature of steel, which Zięta explores on many fields. 

We will see the bionic objects attracting with their lustrous surfaces in an unusual setting highlighting their fairyness and mysteriousness, as well as advanced methods of designing and manufacturing. Oskar Zięta will astonish the visitors with his innovative approach to functional forms such as PLOPP stool or ULTRALEGGERA chair and will take us on a journey through the land of extraordinary metamorphoses. From the natural world, we will go through a "controlled loss of control" process to the FiDU technology ecosystem and then to parametric design methods.

Oskar Zięta creates his sculptures and objects in the FiDU process of forming metal, where the collaboration between the machine and the human is crucial. However, in his steel stories, we will not only encounter the cool elegance of steel. The amazing colours and tonal transitions that characterize RONDO mirrors are the results of experiments with pigments and steel treatment. In its courtyard, the visitors to the MOS Scene will be able to admire an installation made of these round mirrors. Their polished surface, in colours inspired by stellar constellations and minerals, reflects the surrounding space, multiplies images and twists the reality.


In the book, A Labour of Love, Philip Fimmano notes that “Suddenly the machine is no longer the antithesis of unbridled innovation but the handmaid of the designer; enabling, embellishing and advancing production. Man and machine finally merge and become one.” Lidewij Edelkoort, another author of the 2020 publication, draws attention to the renaissance of our relationship with the materials. The exhibition in the Malopolska Garden of Arts will be Oskar Zięta’s first monographic show in Kraków. It is an apotheosis of the power of the material, which is steel, and refers to the so-called ​“neo-materialist” movement, which reasserts the centuries-old beliefs that materials have their own force and exude their own energy. At the same time, the exhibition will reveal the creative process as a result of a close relationship between man and machine.


In Oskar Zięta’s oeuvre, art, nature and technology are inseparable. Forms that astonish with their exceptional qualities, such as resilience and lightness, come to life thanks to their coexistence. Their organic shapes and otherworldly colour palette make each of them a singular tale – of the amazing world of physics and pushing its boundaries. In the Oskar Zięta’s steel theatre, a lot can still happen …
 

The online opening of the exhibition will be streamed on the Zieta Studio and GAGA Facebook profiles, on October 22th (Thursday), 7 pm. The exhibition’s visiting hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 7 pm, Saturday – Sunday, 10 am – 5 pm. The entry is free of charge.


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Oskar Zięta is an architect and a designer of processes, an artist merging in his projects the advanced technologies with forms that cross the limits of geometry and play with the senses. The iconic representative of his style is the PLOPP stool (2008), as well as the architectonic sculptures in the public space: WIR (2017) in Warsaw, and NAWA, a sculptural pavilion on Daliowa Island in Wrocław (2017).


Oskar Zięta's design and artistic activity has been repeatedly awarded the most important awards, among others the Designpreis Award, Red Dot and Audi Mentor Preis, Must Have, as well as a nomination for the Schweizer Design Preis. In 2019, his NAWA was nominated for the prestigious European Mies van der Rohe award. Moreover, Oskar Zięta has collaborated with brands such as Audi, Architonic, Rado and Pirelli. His works are in several dozen museums around the world, including the collections of the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Pinakothek in Munich, the Jerke Museum and the Pompidou Center in Paris.