Franciszek Buchner

Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. His works often consist of an attempt to find an answer to the most uncomplicated questions. The way they come into being is akin to an obsession, a compulsive disorder or a ritual.

Featuring photographs and films, the work of Franciszek Buchner is the result of  the artist’s pursuit of the vivisection of life. The artist writes, “I woke up in my room and it dawned on me that nothing there was alive, everything was dead.” In search of “life”, Buchner tidies his room and comes across organic “life” around him – fish, a bird, flies. Yet, these creatures turn out to be dead. Hence the desperate attempt to reanimate them, restore their intrinsic worth as living creatures, and reverse the process of dying. The photographs for the project took almost two years to produce. Some of them are views that were randomly encountered, while others portray pre-arranged situations. They are a reply to death that the artist came across in the urban landscape – death that is neglected and forgotten – a fact that enhances its effects but, at the same time, turns its accidental character into  something anticipated and wanted. The work is underpinned by a reflection on contemporary culture, which ignores and denies death, old age and related disorders and incapacities. It is a culture that tries to push them out of the frame of life, which the artist intends to bring to the centre of attention.