Koji Kamoji, Moment, 1982, akryl na płótnie, 50 x 50 cm

Koji Kamoji is the author of paintings, installations and spatial constructions. He creates works through which we feel the material presence of concepts such as distance, a journey, sadness, grief, repetition, memory, word, line, horizon, blue, space, emptiness, silence, scream, time, something, nothing, in between, everything. Kamoji was born in Tokyo in 1935. In 1959, he left there and settled in Warsaw, where he still lives today. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and has been present on the art scene in Poland since 1965, when he had his first exhibition at the Krzysztofory Gallery in Kraków.

His favorite materials are stone, water, sheet metal, wood, string, glass, paper, sometimes paint. A candle, a branch, the remains of an old boat, wire, a paving slab, or a mirror may also appear in his paintings and spatial objects. In 1975, he punctured a hole in the wall of the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, calling it The Hole. In 1994, at the Legionowo Public Library, through the floor of the gallery operating there, he dug several meters down until a well was formed. He titled it Water-Haiku.

There are three of his works in the Galeria Studio Collection. These are the spatial composition On the Wall of the Temple from 1965 and two paintings entitled Moment, of the same size and shape, both dating from 1982. The protagonist of Moment is a pebble that meets the horizon. The force of attraction would like to bring the pebble to the ground. Or even underground. But the pebble resists. He wishes to wander around the world some more.

No one else knows better than Koji Kamoji how to show us we are part of the cosmos. The force of gravity keeps us alive. At the same time, in order to survive, we have to fight it, putting all our strength into it.

Dorota Jarecka