Biography
JO – i.e. Jacek Opała, born in 1970 in Bolesławiec, Lower Silesia region, sculptor, ceramicist. He is a self-taught person. He is an engineer by education. He has his own heritage company.
He discovered his sculpting passion creating first ceramic moulds, with the support of the Błotny brothers in their plant in Parowa. After some time, he equipped his own workshop and started to fire his works in an electric furnace, independently.
Fascinated with the classic art, from ancient Pompeii, through Michelangelo to Igor Mitoraj, attempts to make his works include a perfect harmony of form, aesthetics, vividness
and colour. Adding elements of architecture, erotica and painting, he tries to capture and maintain the emotions. Because he himself yearns for obvious arts, he, in his own manner, wants his sculptures to tell stories. He is glad when those who watch it, recognize some hint in them and make their own further story. He would like his works to provoke reflections and, at the same time,
cause emotions, in an obvious manner. Asked about inspirations, he replies that this is life, the nature, the history, people, everything, in a word.
The process of creation consists in carving a model in clay and making a mould of it. Based on this mould, he creates a series of works with various elements of his stories and various methods of decoration - from a raw, rough stoneware, to complicated painting elements hidden in glaze. Each work is different. Each one is a new challenge and contains elements of technological experiments. Each one, upon a request, can be reforged into a bronze cast.
He is a member of the Polish Ceramics Association. In 2013 he presented his works for the first time in public in the Polish Institute in Prague, together with other works of artists from Bolesławiec, inter alia the glaze of Borowscy or canvases of E. Szuter. In the end of 2013 he opened an individual exhibition in the Szalom gallery in Kraków. In the subsequent years, he participated, among others, in competitions and exhibitions in Zakopane, Wrocław, Warszawa, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Dresden. In August 2016 we could see his works at the exhibition within the Festival dell’Arte in the Palace in Pakoszów. In march 2017 has an individual exhibition in Chicago. The chosen, awarded work was purchased by the museum of arts in Śląsk. His works can be watched in numerous galleries throughout Poland. Some of them are located in private collections, also abroad.
He is the winner of several prizes, inter alia grand Prix II Art Pasion Festiwal, Palm Art Competition 2015, a prize in International Art Competition/Cultural_Diversity 2016, ArtavitaContecst Competition 2016.
married, two nice children
