The exhibition titled 19 Dreams of Olbiński features a collection of works aimed at presenting a landscape halfway between the reality and a dream, combining sleepy melancholy with an irresistible feeling of soothing calmness. The blue colour, which prevails in almost every work, brings to mind the infinity and positive energy coming from dreams, and seems to dispel negative feelings and thoughts.

Rafał Olbiński’s pictures feature a landscape in which we live and breathe, through which we move and feel in different ways, while simultaneously dematerializing it. Put in complex, paradoxical juxtapositions, filled with visions of, at times real and other times, unreal objects, characters, plants and space, they evoke in the viewers a feeling of ambivalence.

Being both illusive and ambiguous, they pull us in and push us out, back and forth like waves coming in on the shore and preparing the beach for the approaching storm.

Rafał Olbiński

for his works he received more than 150 awards, including gold and silver medals granted by the Art Directors Club in New York as well as gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators in New York and Los Angeles.

In 1994 he received the International Oscar for the World’s Most Memorable Poster, Prix Savignac in Paris. In 1995 his poster was chosen as the official New York City Capital of the World poster by a jury led by mayor Rudolph Giuliani. In 2002 the City of Fondi, Italy, granted him the “Premio Divina Giulia” award for his outstanding contribution to contemporary art.

In the years 1983–1988 he was a lecturer in Tyler School of Art at the Temple University in Philadelphia, and in the years 1987–2001 he conducted classes at the prestigious School of Visual Arts in New York.

Rafał Olbiński’s art is presented in numerous exhibitions around the world. In 2001 the Willy Brandt House displayed Rafał Olbiński’s works as part of an individual retrospective exhibition titled “Art at the Turn of the Century”. In 2012 Olbiński was a special guest at the International Festival El Cervantino in Guanajuato in Mexico. Two years later his works were presented at the Art Expo China in Bejiing.

In 2006, Bronisław Komorowski, President of the Republic of Poland, awarded to the artist the Gloria Artis gold medal, and in 2012 the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

In 2013, as part of the Teraz Polska competition, Rafał Olbiński received the Outstanding Pole award.

Organizer: Art in the City Foundation, Ghelamco Poland

05.09. – 30.11.2016