ROMAN BICEK

Roman Bicek (1981) is a visual artist working at the interface of painting, collage and politically engaged art. His work has long been at the intersection of social criticism, visual culture and subversion — with sharp irony, analytical insight and a willingness to take risks both formally and in terms of content. Bicek is not an artist of one style or method: his approach is experimental, changeable and responsive to current social events — but always ideologically distinct and conceptually grounded. Critics describe him as an artist who demands an equally open, courageous and critical viewer as he is himself. In his work, he addresses phenomena such as authoritarianism, consumer society, the relationship between capitalism and art, the position of the artist in the market system, culture wars and the polarization of public discourse, nationalism, sexism and the construction of gender identities. He works with visual material of various origins — periodicals, media, pop culture, his own work — which he collages, remixes, comments on and introduces into new networks of meanings. For him, text is an equal means of expression as an image.