Piotr Kolanko (Master of Graphic 2016 Academy of Art Cracow) was born in Jasło, a city with an immense historical charge, 97% destroyed during the war. Bombed and depopulated, the city was rebuilt by the hands of its inhabitants after the war’s end. This history, its emotional charge, and symbolic meaning remain very much alive within the city. The motif of return, reconstruction, and the search for identity is highly significant in the artist’s work. 

As a teenager, he became interested in symbols and the psychology of the depths; this was a natural consequence of seeking the foundations of consciousness structure and resulted from the desire to construct a new identity. His art is full of intuition, premonition, mysticism, archetypes, and symbols, deeply rooted in the aesthetics of decay, reconstruction, destruction. The creative process itself is a continuous cycle of building, destruction, and reconstruction upon the ruins. In his art, he reaches for various media, constantly experimenting and expanding the spectrum of his abilities and interests. He states that his art finds its source in the unremitting force of libido, concentrated in the compulsive creative

process. A vital part of his endeavors is the environment and the relationships associated with space, object, and void. These elements are so characteristic of socio-architectural forms.