Nationality British Parents Robert Lenkiewicz Role Artist | Name Wolfe Lenkiewicz | |
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Born 1966 ( 1966 ) | ||
Notable work London, United Kingdom | ||
Wolfe von lenkiewicz i have an excellent idea let s change the subject
Wolfe von Lenkiewicz (born 1966) is a British artist known for his artistic reconfigurations of well-known imageries from art history and visual culture to create ambiguous compositions that question art historical discourses. He lives and works in London.
Contents
- Wolfe von lenkiewicz i have an excellent idea let s change the subject
- Wolfe von lenkiewicz talks at the ladbroke terrace collective 2 9 12
- Early life and education
- Artistic career
- Selected exhibitions
- References
Wolfe von lenkiewicz talks at the ladbroke terrace collective 2 9 12
Early life and education
Wolfe von Lenkiewicz was born in Dartmoor, England, England, in 1966 to Celia Norman and the British painter Robert Lenkiewicz. He is of German-Polish-Jewish descent, with his great-grandfather being Baron von Schlossberg, court painter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Lenkiewicz was educated at University of York, graduating in 1989 with a degree in Philosophy.
Artistic career
Lenkiewicz exhibited 33 drawings including 3 large-scale works at his first major exhibition, Nu-Trinity, at Dickinson in 2007. Richard Dyer described the exhibition as 'an iconographic investigation into the power inherent in certain images and events, and the mythos associated with them'. Lenkiewicz’s works have since then been exhibited internationally, including Tate Britain and All Visual Arts in London, Triumph Gallery in Moscow, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, as well as in Dublin, Hamburg, Berlin and Venice.
His works primarily deal with the appropriation of language and mythology by juxtaposing elements such as religious figures, pop culture icons, literary characters and motifs. Lenkiewicz's drawings and paintings often reference iconic imageries, including those by Albrecht Dürer, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Hieronymus Bosch. Lenkiewicz transforms Dürer's Self-Portrait (1500) in his Werewolf (2011), referencing Jacques Derrida's The Beast and the Sovereign.
Selected exhibitions
In 2009, Lenkiewicz's solo exhibition titled The Descent of Man exhibited over 80 works in a former landmark bank building by Arthur Beresford Pite in London. In the following year, Lenkiewicz's Victory Over the Sum opened in Triumph Gallery in Moscow, showcasing works including But, but I am a Legend (2010), a painting in which motifs such as Marie-Therese Walter's head from Picasso's portrait and François Boucher's Odalisque have been assimilated into the iconic Guernica (1937).
Lenkiewicz has participated in many group exhibitions including Zwei Sammler: Thomas Olbricht und Harald Falckenberg in Deichtorhallen, Hamburg in 2011; as well as Babel, in Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille in 2012. At Deichtorhallen, Lenkiewicz exhibited Ace of Spades (2009), which is in the collection of German collector Thomas Olbricht.
Lenkiewicz's latest body of works are inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, transforming The Garden of Earthly Delights (ca.1490) into a 'post-historic, trans-cultural manuscript'.