I wanted to make things bright and colourful. I thought one could do that with paints. I tried to break through nature, so that it would become a little bit more visible, uncovered, but it would be often blurred. It would circle and return and turn back again into painting. Not much of the island have I collected with paints. There are different views there, different colours, different brightness. The Balian culture fascinates with colours, dance expression and a unique form of sculpture. It is worthwhile going deeper into the island to look closer, among fields and villages, at people. The culture there is intertwined with everyday effort and the very present sacred. And the brightness is enormous. In spite of dust, fumes and grey walls. The brightness shines through, saturates and shimmers. Heat stuns people and makes them numb. Because as it is very bright, it is also very hot. It is good to go out of the sun at noon. I was neither the first nor the last one to look for light and colours. Sometimes I found them very bright and completely different than I thought. I like to paint with clear, bright colours, also when it means going astray. Bali isn’t yellow and the dancers don’t freeze in two dimensions. On the island of women pray with dance. In the villages there live painters, sculptors, and dancers. They are usually polite, hospitable and smiling calmly. I saw how bright and colourful it was. I wanted to paint some of this.
Waldemar Kakareko

Waldemar Kakareko was born in Bydgoszcz, in 1967. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, where he studied painting at the Institute of Art and Teaching (1988-1993) and restoration at the Institute for Restoration and Maintenance of Polychrome Paintings and Sculptures (1995-2000). In 1999-2000, he studied at the Maharaja Sayajirao Baroda University in Vadodara, India. In 2003, as a scholarship holder, he deepened his knowledge at the Schutzdenkmalampt conservation studio in Hamburg. As a part of the scholarship, he also made a trip around India (later, he returned there several times). He travelled around Vietnam, Thailand, Bali. Having returned to Bydgoszcz, he dreams of another journey to exotic regions of the world. It is his inspiration and fascination. He paints and photographs. He creates expressive paintings in the dominant yellows and reds, complemented with blue and green. These are representational works of art – harvesters, dancers, villages and their inhabitants, landscapes under the hot sun. Mateusz Soliński wrote: „The roots of Waldemar Kakareko’s paintings can be found in the works of colourists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In his works, Kakareko combines the wild and predatory form of early works of fowists with the weather and cheerfulness of Henri Matisse’s late works. (…) Individual works painted in a single colour tone form a cycle of sunny images. Shapes created with strong patches of colour merge into one organic whole. The objects lose their concreteness by melting in the rays of light.” Strong texture, bold brush strokes, colour dynamics or intentional deformation are the sum of Waldemar Kakareko’s experiences resulting from him analysing the works of Chaim Soutine and Jan Cybis, artists whom he highly values. He presented his works at several individual exhibitions. Another one, inspired by Bali’s culture and nature, will be a surprise, as the painter extended his artistic expression with sculpture.
curator – Elżbieta Kantorek
Kantorek Gallery, 3 Gdańska St.
Beginning: 7.11.2017 6pm 3 Gdańska St.
End: 30.11.2017