Damian BONK.

Bio

Damian Bonk (born 1991) is a painter. He lives and works in Krakow. His practice is rooted in metaphorical figuration.

From 2011 to 2016, he studied Painting at the Faculty of Painting, Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He is a graduate of the Doctoral School at the same institution.

He received a Minister of Culture Scholarship. His work has been shown, in collaboration with independent spaces and curators, in solo and group exhibitions in Poland and internationally.

He is currently preparing a solo exhibition at the Nowa Huta Cultural Centre in Krakow (September 2026), where he will present a continuation of the series on the barriers of reality, placing the figures in scenes drawn from his home region.

Artist statement

He paints in oil on hand-prepared supports. His working process is based on the precise articulation of a vision in which natural forms and phenomena transform and evolve, acquiring a particular quality through painting.

His work addresses imagined light through its heightened, almost supernatural resonance. The painting becomes a meeting point between the real and the visionary, while retaining aspects of mimesis. He continues to develop questions explored in his doctoral thesis Illumination and Luminescence, distinguishing between types of light: natural, physical and local. These are not opposed to unnatural forms of glow, but begin to work in relation to them. Although his paintings carry traces of historical painting, they propose a contemporary set of universal questions about existence.

His impulse to paint comes from visions that recur in his consciousness, most often set in the landscape of his native region. The hills, meadows and fields of the Holy Cross Mountains, where he grew up, return insistently in his mind. They usually form the space in which the central figure of the painting appears. In recent works, they have served as a backdrop for a fallen rider. This distinctly Romantic motif, which arrives with an almost intrusive force, leads him into a register of emotion. The visions are accompanied by feelings that prompt reflection on varied, at times extreme, aspects of the human interior. The painted surface becomes the field on which the imagined scene unfolds.

His works form a metaphorical narrative about a person wrestling with reality. The paintings may be read as definitions, in paint, of the moment when existence reaches barriers and limits. Confronted with certain constraints, the figure struggles to arrive at the intended goal and recognises the collapse of a system of values and ideals. Despite the barrier, the stage of change, requiring patience and certain renunciations, remains barely perceptible. He continues to paint further genre scenes of this kind, reflecting on the dual nature of reality.

He would like the viewer encountering the painting to enter its world and, to some degree, be held by the emotions that led him to paint it.

I would like to describe the light
coming into being within me
but I know it is unlike
any star
not as bright
not as pure
and uncertain Zbigniew Herbert