Patricia Olynyk
Associate Professor, Director
Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Program
Roman J. Witt Visiting Faculty Program
School of Art and Design
University of Michigan
2000 Bonisteel Blvd
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Tel: (734) 763 3027
Fax: (734) 615 9753
Email: polynyk@umich.edu
THIS PROJECT IS FUNDED IN PART THROUGH THE TRUST FOR MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING
Exchange Portfolio and Exhibition: "Kontakt: Hand in Hand"
Shifting geographical, cultural, and political frameworks have played a major role in shaping the history, breadth, and scope of printmaking across the globe.
Over the centuries, matrix-based technologies have developed based on individual preferences, regional specialties, and in response to a broad array of cultural dictates. In addition, during the course of recent decades, the advent of digital technology has propelled nothing less than a transformation in printmaking, altering the way print media is contextualized, employed, and interpreted. Undeniably, no single definition exists which can capture the essence of print based media in the 21st century.
As printmaking continues to evolve and expand, and as print artists throughout the world explore connections between replicative media and other forms of creative activity, exciting and unforeseen conversations and collaborations emerge. With this in mind, I envisioned a portfolio exchange project entitled: Kontakt: Hand in Hand, involving twenty-one artists from the global community. Hand in Hand not only celebrates the vibrancy of print-based media, but stresses themes related to unification, collaboration, and trans-national and trans-generational connectedness.
While my original intention for Hand in Hand was for ten invited artists to in turn invite ten other artists as participants and collaborators , the project has taken on a life of its own. Over the course of five months, twenty-one artists have indicated their desire to be a part of the project including eight multi-generational Polish artists, and thirteen artists from the international community. Celebrating the richness of pluralistic approaches to the serial image, and reflecting the ever-expanding fluidity between global borders, several participants in Hand in Hand are also ex-patriots, living and working in countries far from their own.
Kontakt: Hand in Hand will be presented at the Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu (National Museum of Art of Poznan), Poland during IMPACT IV, and includes the following artists:
Wayne Crothers, Australia + Japan
Rafi Haque, Bangladesh
Julio Valdez, Dominican Republic
Sigrid Valtingojer, Iceland
Toshihisa Fudezuka, Japan
Kimura Shegeyuki, Japan
Magdalena Hoffmann, Poland
Krzysztof Molenda, Poland
Jan Pamula, Poland
Krystyna Piotrowska, Poland
Artur Skowronski, Poland
Malgorzata Warlikowska, Poland
Anna Sobol-Wejman, Poland
Stanislaw Wejman, Poland
Steven Inggs, South Africa
Moshekwa Langa, South Africa
Karen Kunc, U.S.
Hung Liu, U.S.
Lothar Osterburg, U.S.+ Germany
Judy Pfaff, U.S.
Patricia Olynyk, U.S. + Canada.
Note on size of prints: twenty-one works, (30.48 cm x 53.34 cm), and 21 participants can choose either a horizontal or a vertical format.
PATRICIA OLYNYK is engaged in interdisciplinary practices that include printmaking, sculpture, and installation, exploring the miniaturization and manipulation of the natural world. Her collage prints and interactive pieces investigate the interrelationships between human culture and the environment, values issues raised by genetics research, digital and biomedical imaging technologies as they relate to the creative process, and the intersection of visual representation, sound, and the written word. In doing so, her work inevitably explores the process of extricating oneself from a static position to rethink the nature of identity. Her work has been shown internationally in such exhibitions as “Transfigurations”, Galleria Grafica Tokio, Ginza, Tokyo; “Digital Printmaking Now”, Brooklyn Museum of Art; “Mois de l’Estampe”,Print Exposition,Galerie Michele Broutta, Paris; “Paper Road”,Museo del Corso, Rome; and the “L.A International Biennial Exhibition”, Toby Moss Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work is included in collections of the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, the Hewlett Packard Headquarters in California, the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, and the Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is currently Associate Professor, and Director of the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Program, and Director of the Roman J. Witt Visiting Faculty Program at the School of Art and Design, University of Michigan. She was a Monbusho Scholar and Tokyu Foundation Research Scholar in Japan for four years where she studied printmaking and papermaking. She completed her undergraduate work in Canada at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and received her MFA with Distinction from the California College of the Arts in California.