ANDRZEJ PLUTA
Andrzej Pluta was born in Poland in and lives in Canada. His unique photographic works are in many private and public collections worldwide including Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia and actress Susan Sarandon . He is considered by many to be a highly collected and internationally acclaimed fine art photographer.
His work is created by using a Sinar 8 x 10 inch camera. For some compositions, Carl Zeiss Mirotar 1000mm F5.6 lens (one of the world's rarest) is used on the Sinar 8 x 10" making it the only camera construction of its kind. Using an unconventional and complex lighting technique, the full frame image is exposed on 8 x 10 Fujichrome film. There is no darkroom or computer work and no retouching of the original color transparency.
Pluta has worked for over 30 years as a fine artist in photography. He attended an art photography school as a young man.
Because of the internal political situation in his country in 1970 he emigrated and first traveled to Rome Italy and later to Canada, moving from Toronto to Montreal and then Vancouver undertaking personality and editorial fashion photography.
He then left for Los Angeles where he stayed for five years working on album covers, fusion ads and celebrity portraits before returning to Canada.
He developed his own unique style through experimentation. Each series of work produced brings about imaginative abstractions, varied color palettes and unusual camera techniques.
Pluta has had nearly 20 solo exhibitions at the Steuben Gallery in New York since 1990 and has been commissioned by the gallery to photograph their limited edition glass several times.
EUROPEAN EXHBITIONS:
Stara Gallery, Warsaw
JCJ Haans, Antwerp
European Parliament, Brussels
Museum of Man, Sofia
US EXHIBITIONS:
Steuben Gallery, New York,
Fraser Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Madelyn Jordan Gallery Scarsdale NY.
Alan Klotz Gallery NY.
PRIVATE SHOWINGS AND SALES OF FRAMED PHOTOGRAPHS IN THEIR CATALOGUES:
Saks Fifth Avenue, New York
Neiman Marcus, New York
COMMISSIONS.....
Holston Perfumes.NY..........
Steuben Limited Addition Glass........
Princes Marcella Borghese. IL BACIO..Perfume.......
Basara Mens Colones Tokyo Japan........
ON LINE AUCTIONS..
Sotheby's, New York
Artnet.com, New York
AWARDS.
Firs Canadian National Award for "Wild Flowers Portfolio" published in "Border Crossings" Canadian Art Magazine in 2000.
PORTFOLIO SELECTIONS:
Published in Art and Photography Magazines in Germany, Canada, Bulgaria, Japan and Dubai
Artist Statment What is it flowers mean in the space they occupy? Why do they stop us up short and call us to a halt with their soundless last syllable? Is it their resolute sense of self, their undilute wholeness? Maybe instead, it’s their sense of imminence. Maybe it’s about colour–their blue: gentian, cobalt, peacock, lapis lazuli or sky; their red: vermilion, carmine, garnet, blood; their yellow: sun, honey, butter, lemon; their green: peridot, parakeet, water, acid, emerald, lime.
They are first things. They are the beginning point, the springboard for metaphor, the objects to which other things are likened. Or try: dance and sway, harmony and equilibrium, surprise and splendour; try cool touch to fever, bulb and trumpet, spikes and velvet, surcease and thrust, pulse and throb. Think of nettles and roses, stamens, pistils and swords, pods and pulp, nectar and scent, poppy and yield, balm and beauty.
2005
By Louis Jacobson, © Washington City Paper
The blossoming of tulips and seeing Washington Nationals caps aren’t the only signs of
spring in downtown Bethesda; another is an exhibition of photographs by Andrzej Pluta at
the Fraser Gallery.
The last Fraser show for the Polish-born, Canada-based artist was a crowd-pleaser, thanks
to Pluta’s large-scale, boisterously colorful floral images, which were clearly visible through
the gallery’s plate-glass windows from 100 feet away. This time, Pluta has stuck with this
idea — offering highly infused renderings of flowers, subtly distorted by such tricks as
submerging the flowers beneath rippling water.
The current show, though heavily weighted (as was the first) toward reds and pinks
benefits when Pluta experiments with other hues, as in the wispy Yellow Flowers or the
mesmerizing arrangement of colors in Blue Abstract, which range from aqua to an indigo so
dark that it verges on black.
In Wild Violets, Pluta finds a winning formula by photographing translucent,
deep-purple-pinstriped petals amid a forest of parallel green stalks; in Wild Rose, he faithfully
reproduces the veins and spines of flat green leaves, paying homage to the cameraless
botanical studies made in the earliest days of photography. Pluta’s most skillful works,
however, are those such as Parrot Tulip and New, in which he uses photography to render his
beloved flowers with the convincing illusion of painterly brushstrokes.
SEARCH FOR PURITY.
ANDRZEJ's COMPOSITIONS TELL US ABOUT A WORLD OF FORCES INTERACTING WITH EACH OTHER. THOSE FORCES ARE SHAPES,AND THOSE SHAPES ARE LIVING SHAPES. THESE LIVING ENTITIES SEARCH FOR EACH OTHER,THEY WONT TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER.THEY ARE MADE OF VERY SENSIBLE MATTER. CRYSTAL, FEATHERS, MEMBRANES FROM INSECT WINGS, FLOWERS FIBER.
ANDRZEJ BELONGS TO THE KIND OF ARTIST THAT FALL INTO THE MANNERIST TREND.
ANDRZEJ DOES ART PER ART. HE PLAYS WITH MATTER, THE PLANE, LIGHT, DISTANCE, COLOR AND COMES OUT WITH A COSMOS THAT IS RULED BY THE LAWS OF LOVE. THESE LAWS MOVE THE SUN AND ALL THE OTHER STARS, AS DANTE EXPRESSED IN HIS DIVINE COMEDY
ANDRZEJ HAS KINSHIP WITH ARCIMBOLDO, MIRO AND THE LIKE MANNERISTS. HIS APPROACH IS SOMEHOW LEONARDESCUE.
HE THINKS OF ALL THE KINGDOMS, ANIMAL, VEGETAL AND MINERAL AS PARTS OF THE SAME THING.
FOR ANDRZEJ MAN IS THE SYNTHESIS OF THEM ALL AND THROUGH WHOM ALL MANIFEST.
ANDRZEJ SURPRISES,MAKES PUNS,TRANSFORMS. ARCIMBOLDO USES FRUITS,VEGETABLES,FISH FOR THE EVOCATION OF SEASONS AND ELEMENTS.
ANDRZEJ USES FRAGILE TRANSPARENT CRYSTALS, INSECT PAWS AND EAGER FLOWERS TO SHOW US A PASSIONATE WORLD,FULL OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY.
JOAN MIRO COMPOSES FREE FORMS IN AN UNDEFINED SPACE,THE UNIVERSE. ANDRZEJ PLUTA WITH THE SAME FREEDOM AND PLAYFULNESS REACHES THE BOUNDLESS DIMENSION WHERE EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
ANDRZEJ SEARCH IS ONE OF PURITY. AND WITHIN THIS SEEMINGLY IRRELEVANT QUEST HE RAISES QUESTIONS THAT PERTAIN TO ALL OF HUMANKIND.
MR. JOSEPH BERTRAND.
ASSISTANT CURATOR
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA MUSEUM OF ART.
TUSCON, ARIZONA. USA.
July 1995.
