Piotr Szmitke

From 2012 Consul General of the Kingdom of Metavera in Krakow.
Interdisciplinary artist and art theoretician. Visual artist, stage designer, composer, playwright and director. The author and propagator of a new notion in art - “metaverism". In 2005 the Silesian Opera in Bytom staged Piotr Szmitke's opera, The Hysterical Museum of Mme Eurosa.  In 2009 the film The Crime of Icarus, directed by Szmitke, had its premiere. The same year, Piotr Szmitke was included in the list of 10 most versatile artists in Europe. During the almost 10 years of his stay in Paris he announces, in 1988, his “metaveristic manifesto”, according to which the material of art is history of art itself, and the artist is the curator who sets its rules. The notion of metaverism is a heuristic exemplification of the contradiction between the obligation of consistency of the artist's visual language and “the principle of freedom in art”. It assumes creating virtual personalities of artists, forming their hypothetical beings, biographies and individual work methods, grounded in a specific socio-cultural context. In the metaverist doctrine a key role is played by optimental perspective. According to its rules, true knowledge of an object comes only from the act of its perception. Basing on quantum mechanics, the metaverist assumes that the representation of an object is not possible without a simultaneous presentation of an image of its interpreter. Metaverism, as a critical and socially involved current, offers a warning against an invasion of virtual values. It reveals a world of simulacra, fictionally prepared facts, images and authorities which appropriate human minds, removing from them any willingness to participate actively in creating a real reality.
2011 - badge of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Merit for Polish Culture.

www.szmitke.art.pl