Unique sculpture (stone Marble limestone ), 2005r, dimensions: 40 x 20 x 20 cm
Motto: "This is the purpose of art-to manifest spiritual life and to be the driving force of man's spiritual life"-Vassily Kandinsky.
Miłosz Płonka -artist-sculptor-painter, illustrator, creator of functional forms, conservator.
Born in Wadowice in 1969 in the extraordinary microclimate of the Beskid Mały. Here in Andrychów and Roczyny he spent his childhood and early youth, enchanted and constantly inspired by the region on the border of three lands-Malopolska, Silesia and the Carpathians. Childhood works include chess pieces made of linden and birch wood, numerous crucifixes, figures of saints, characters from fairy tales and books-a rich collection of his parents, figures inspired by the iconography of local roadside shrines. In 1992, after the death of his father in the Andrychow cemetery in the family grave, he installs a shrine made of an oak trunk more than 2 meters high with a cross hollowed out.
The artist is a graduate of the Antoni Kenar High School of Fine Arts in Zakopane, in 1990-1992 he studied at the Department of Ceramics and Glass at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, including in the sculpture studio of Professor Alojzy Gryta. Since 1992, he continued his artistic studies at the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, in the sculpture studios of Prof. Adam Myjak and Prof. Jan Kucz. In 1996, he received a diploma with distinction in the sculpture studio of Prof. Adam Myjak and the drawing and painting studio of Prof. Jacek Sienicki.
Scholarship holder at the Higher School of Visual Arts (intermedia studio of Prof. Juraj Bartusz) in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1997 and in 1997-98 at Benares Hindu University (Faculty of Visual Art, sculpture - Prof. Balbir Singh Katt) in Varanasi, India. In 2000-2001 he was a teaching fellow at the High School of Visual Arts in Nowy Wisnicz. Since 2005 he has been running the Art Studio in Warsaw and Roczyny, where he creates sculptures in various materials, oil paintings , drawings and drawing projects, original furniture and equipment. The studio also recycles and preserves wooden furniture, doors and windows.
Currently he divides his time and professional activity between Warsaw and Andrychów and Rczyn. He makes works on commission, participates in group and individual exhibitions, as well as auctions and art fairs.
The artist's work encompasses several disciplines-sculpture, painting, installations, original furniture and equipment. He draws inspiration from sacred and folk art, as well as areas of contemporary art and culturally different, such as Asia and the Pacific, as well as African art. Her contact with the teachings of Buddha and Buddhist philosophy resulted in the creation of 5 statues referring in their style to Buddhist iconography.(One was purchased by Benares Hindu University, the second stands on the grounds of the Oriental Oasis of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw, the third in the Gallery in Slovakia, and two more are in private hands).From 1999 to 2014 she has been working with the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw.
He works in wood, stone, clay, metal, paper and plaster. The subject of his sculptural works is primarily man, his physis and psyche. The accurate characterizations of Milosz Plonka's work described by painter Andrzej Ziomek and Jagna Kaczanowska - a psychologist - are worth quoting:
"The sculptures in wood and stone that dominate Milosz Plonka's work are worthy of prolonged reflection. The artist masterfully combines elements of the traditional canon of Buddhist sculpture with such a European subject as a human being(...) The heads that Plonka sculpts are symbolic, they are at some kind of boundary between perfection and frailty of human existence. "A. Ziomek.
"Płonka's works go a bit beyond the traditional Western understanding of beauty, there is something understated in these sculptures, some mystery, drama, roughness, there is no place for prettiness, smoothness or an attempt to coquettish the onlooker." J.Kaczanowska.
The last monumental work with a sacred theme is the 15 Stations of the Cross made in more than two-meter oak poles for the Szeptycki Family Foundation, which are located in the Franciscan Sisters' Monastery in Łabuniach, creating an unusual atmosphere full of spiritual mystery. The work was created in 2021- 2022 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the missionary sisters in Poland.
In painting, the artist considers color as an autonomous value. His abstractions, painted with energy and joy, vibrate with the colors of the rainbow, bringing into the monotony of life elements of optimism and dynamism based on pulsation and spatial play of forms, light and colors. He is also inspired by the landscape, whose realistic as well as abstract forms he transfers to the canvas. "Languedoc"-2008, "Autumn in the Beskids "2000, "Isny in Algau" 2000, "Horizontal Landscape"-2016, Andrychów 1992, "Caravan "1992, "Borders of Infinity"-2000. "Horizons of Space"-2006, "Inside the Machine"-2019. Space2004, "Solids"-2017.
For several years he has been cooperating with Bator Art Gallery min. taking part in international exhibitions "Magical dreams",with the theme of surrealism and magical realism. Cyclical exhibitions present current works of artists working in this theme from more than a dozen countries around the world.Every two years a new exhibition is presented in Poland and Europe.
The artist participates in individual and group exhibitions, art activities and plein-air events, both in Poland and abroad. He has been invited to participate in international art symposia, among others in Fuzhou, China in 2003, in France -Saint Henri in 2008, in Komarno, Slovakia in 2002, in Varanasi, India in 1998.
In Warsaw, he exhibited, among others, at the international exhibition organized by the Asia and Pacific Museum entitled" Lhasa apso my love" in 2001, and "Kakadu my love" in 2010 - at the Zoo in Warsaw's Praga district. He participated in the art festival "Neighbors for neighbors" in 2006, in the Night of Museums at the exhibition entitled: "Zakopiańczycy in Warsaw" in the club "Brzeska siedem" on Brzeska Street- in 2011, and presented his paintings together with Andrzej Ziomek in the club "Łysy Pingwin "on Ząbkowska Street. In 2006. in 2012, he exhibits his sculptures in an exhibition entitled: "Spluttering Identity" together with drawings by Joanna Multan - Świadkiewicz at the gallery "Stairs" at Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw. Since 2014, he has participated in the project Stan Rzeczywisty-night meetings with artists-project organized by a group of artists who create and have their studios in Praga. As part of this project, in May 2024, he presented his works during the Night of Museums at the "Klitka" Gallery in Warsaw.
The artist's works can be seen, among others: in the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw, Benares Hindu University in Varanasi India, Churches min. In Kobyłka near Warsaw, the Museum of the Sorrowful Christ Collection in Jeżowy, the Monastery of the Franciscan Sisters of the Missionaries of Mary in Łabunia near Zamość, as well as private collections: in Isny in Algau -Germany, "Głęboczek Vine Resort and SPA" in Głęboczek- Poland, "Stara Karczma", "Bator Art Gallery" in Szczyrk-Poland, "Associations Saint Henri"-France, "Galeria BaśtaT"- Komarno Slovakia. Private collection of the owner of the shoe company "Ryłko"-Zebrzydowice Poland. Private collections in Canada and Austria, among others. He also designed molds for the production of candles for the beekeeping company-"Lyson".In 2022. He designs a chapel and makes for it a statue of Jan Nepomucen in the village of Nadolce near Laszczow.
Milosz Plonka's work is "an artistic journey in time" - as he put it - stretched between universal Christian spirituality and the spiritualities of Eastern cultures - Buddhism and Hinduism; between the folk art of Poland - the country where he was born, and the iconographies of Asian, African and Oceania cultures, which grew out of primitive art.
Inspired by roadside prayer stones in the Himalayas, granite-carved statues of Vishnu and Shiva in Madras, among others, he seeks analogies and differences in context to Polish and European iconography. He looks for connections between Polish shrines and Romanesque stone sculpture from the Catalonia area, among others.
He provokes the viewer to use his own imagination, to interpret and fantasize, to stop for a moment in the flow of everyday life, to see through the subject of man the structures of wood grain, stone, the shape of material already found in nature. It shows the interpenetration of worlds that is difficult to grasp - the artist and the material he uses.
The work comes directly from the artist, more works by the sculptor are available on our WorldartB Gallery website - www.worldartBGallery.com.
