Tomasz KOCLĘGA (b. 1968), Firmitatem statera, 2022

Patinated bronze, glass, granite; 85 x 35 x 35 cm;
Signed, dated and numbered on the foot: 2/4 / Koclęga / 2022 (engraved)
accompanied by a hologram containing facsimile.

"The sphere is the most perfect of solids, the Pythagoreans claimed. In it is expressed the perfection of form, and when it is made of glass, it also manifests the image of reality's hard-to-imagine transformations. That which is not obvious precisely... Whoever comes into contact with Tomasz Koclęga's latest sculptures hopefully looks deep into those smoothly polished and polished spheres, which the artist put into the large hands of the human figures he carves. Figures that are far from the Vitruvian ideal of man. Instead, they are closer, it seems, to the proportions and size of Le Corbusier's Modulor. The organic shapes of the figures, contrasted with the perfect form of the glass sphere, in which one can see the unusual properties of non-Euclidean geometry, revealing a vague idea of infinity, illustrate the whole spectrum of reflections on the condition of human existence and the artist's striving for universal statements with the language of art.
Tomasz Koclęga (born 1968 in Zawiercie) - sculptor, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, at the Faculty of Graphics in Katowice. He studied in the drawing and painting studio of Prof. Jacek Rykała and in the lithography studio of Prof. Adam Romaniuk and Prof. Józef Budka. He received his academic liberation in 1993. Today he is a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. He has given guest lectures at universities in the USA, India, Finland, the Czech Republic, and his sculptural works can be found on three continents. And it is his sculptural work that the artist focuses on most of all, in it he sees the right meaning of his life and through it he best expresses emotions and seeks the truth about human existence. Art is my whole life," he says.
Thus, the artistic journey of sculptor Tomasz Koclęga has been going on for more than thirty years, and it began quite unusually - with the creation of large sculptural forms from paper. These first works, mostly realized outdoors, exposed to natural factors, lost their original form and, according to the author, went to waste. Then it was the turn of polyester resin and bronze objects. Their scale is not only still large, but has grown to truly monumental proportions. Moved out of the limited gallery space, where only a small percentage of the public looks in, the sculptures are perfectly at home in the open public space, boldly confronting the viewer, who is able to express his or her opinions directly, without wrapping them in social emptiness.
Koclęga's consistent efforts, who - still feeling a lack of contact with the viewer - works constantly, result in recognition not only in many distant places around the world, but, contrary to the age-old belief, at home, in his native Silesia. And this is a great deal. For this to happen, what is born in the artist's imagination needs a transmitter, which is the sculptural concepts realized in the real world. For an idea without realization remains only an idea, nothing more..."
(Excerpt from the article "Tomasz Koclęga says: Unobvious things I want to create" published in the Bulletin of Sculpture No. 4/23; by Dr. Zbigniew Brzostowski ASP Gdańsk).