BIO | Kamil Kukla

Photo: Ewa Szozda

Kamil Kukla (b. 1989, Tarnów) is a painter based in Kraków, whose practice also encompasses digital graphics, objects, and experimental music. He graduated in 2013 from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Since 2014, he has been teaching at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Applied Sciences in Tarnów.

In 2017 he completed artist-in-residence programmes at MeetFactory in Prague and Dukley Art Center in Kotor, Montenegro. In 2016 he won the sixth edition of the Grey House Foundation Award, and two years later was a finalist of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation Award. In 2020 he received the Grand Prix at the BWA Tarnów VII Salon.

Kukla works with allusive modes of abstraction, engaging in a dialogue with the viewer's perception and the painting process itself. He frequently draws on European Baroque and Rococo traditions, producing highly transformed reinterpretations of historical art. At the same time, he is interested in marginal digital practices emerging in obscure corners of the internet. In recent years, his work has increasingly turned toward figurative painting, addressing themes of corporeality, contemporary models of masculinity, and the threats of the Anthropocene in a more direct manner. Despite these shifts, Kukla's visual language remains poetic and ambiguous, resisting direct or didactic readings.

His works are held in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow MOCAK, the National Museum in Gdańsk, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art in Kraków, Municipal Art Gallery in Legnica and BWA Tarnów.

Selected solo exhibitions:

2025

Polymer Galore, Art Industry Standard, Krakow, PL

2022

VORE, Miejska Galeria Sztuki w Łodzi, PL

UTROPA, BWA Tarnów, PL

2019

Frukta i paszczęki, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art, Krakow, PL

Gruczoł Patriotyzmu, m² Gallery, Warsaw, PL

2018

What’s Love Got to Do With It (with Baptiste Charneux), Grey House Gallery, Krakow, PL

ŁEB, m² Gallery, Warsaw, PL