Mateusz Sarzynski

Mateusz Sarzyński (b. 1990, Biłgoraj, Poland) lives and works in Kraków. He took a BSc and MSc in architecture at the Cracow University of Technology and an MFA in graphic arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and works as a tattoo artist and designer alongside painting, which he is largely self taught in. He paints in oil and acrylic spray, fast, usually finishing a canvas in a day and without preparatory sketches. The images come from video games, the internet, television and the tabloid press, and from old master paintings he paraphrases: armless figures, bloody faces, scenes of violence and self destruction that read as reflections on capitalism and the media, set against something like brutalist architecture. He is direct on purpose, and says of himself that he is a Polish guy having fun with painting, hiding intentions behind images that look obvious at first.

In 2018 he won the Hestia Artistic Journey Award, which included a residency in New York with Residency Unlimited. His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the National Museum in Gdańsk, BWA Warszawa, Widna Gallery in Kraków, Rondo Sztuki in Katowice and Campbell Project Space in Sydney.

Sarzyński has worked with Plan X since 2023, when the gallery presented his solo exhibition HI in Milan, followed by a presentation at Contemporary Art Now Ibiza the same year, Lacrimae Rerum at Plan X Capri in 2024 and The Demons Are Us in Milan in 2025.