Janek Koza

For over 15 years, he has been drawing for Polityka, Poland’s leading political weekly. As an illustrator, he collaborates with numerous magazines and newspapers. His comics have been published in Poland, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Hungary. He is also an animated film director and the creator of numerous music videos.

“Much of the artist’s recognition stems from his sense of humour, finely attuned to the absurd, and his keen eye as an observer and commentator on the world around us. He conveys this through a distinctive, instantly recognisable drawing style. Koza’s drawings can be biting, seemingly careless, and beautiful in their ugliness, remarkably true to the subject matter they depict. The same goes for the accompanying texts, composed of uneven lines of slightly wobbly, sometimes even ‘corrected’ capital letters. These drawings make no attempt to ingratiate themselves with the viewer – why should they? Their subjects are just like the lines that describe them: sometimes crooked, unfinished, occasionally thickened, yet minimalist and remarkably precise in their ability to capture the essence of things. Two inconspicuous little arcs become a neighbour’s breasts; another curve points to the belly of an overweight man spilling over his belt; a dozen or so dots suggest the shaved head of a tracksuit-clad thug; and a black scribble turns into a cloud of exhaust fumes billowing from a tailpipe. Even the frames around these satirical drawings can be outrageously crooked. This may be the artist’s way of winking at us – ‘Don’t take them so seriously!’ – or perhaps a deliberate device intended to evoke the effect of a quasi-journalistic sketch. Here is a scene overheard somewhere, another glimpsed somewhere else. And even if that is not the case, even if Janek Koza has invented the whole thing from beginning to end, it still turns out to be painfully true – and funny at the same time.”

– Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna, exhibition catalogue