Łukasz Stokłosa (b. 1986 in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Poland) is a visual artist, painter.
He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 2010. His graduation work, entitled Death and Lust, was devoted to the motif of St. Sebastian in culture. His first individual exhibition was Winter’s Tale (2011) at the Zderzak gallery in Krakow, featuring works in which palace interiors, winter landscapes and portraits of film stars were kept in the artist’s favourite atmosphere of romanticism and decadence.
In 2013, Stokłosa received the Lower Silesian Marshal’s Award in the Geppert Competition. In the following year, he was included in Kurt Beers’ compendium of 100 Painters of Tomorrow, published by Thames&Hudson London-New York, presenting a selection of the most promising contemporary painters. In 2015, he was featured at the exhibition Artists from Krakow, Generation 80-90 at the MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow. Since 2017, he has also been cooperating with the Wrocław-based Krupa Gallery, where his exhibition The Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful Things That Can Be Seen If You Can Look was held in 2018, and the exhibition Cliffhanger in 2021.
In 2019, he was mentioned in the book Queer!? Visual Arts in Europe 1969-2019 by Anton Anthonissen and Evert van Straaten, describing the most interesting examples of queer art in Europe.
He does representational and figurative painting, often inspired by mass culture, films and series. He feels comfortable in the aesthetics of kitsch. Travelling and visiting historic buildings and landmarks is the source of motifs that he later subjects to transformations. He often uses the somewhat archaic strategy of homoerotic camouflage, which he nevertheless finds interesting; he also draws on the aesthetics of camp. By juxtaposing distant and foreign elements in his practice, he compiles a peculiar cabinet of curiosities. This way of constructing the narrative is especially noticeable in his sculptures-objects. His interests revolve around contemporary interpretations of history and past events. What often characterises his paintings is homoerotic images inspired by gay pornography. A special place in his area of interest is occupied by the art of old masters, whose influence is often visible in his works, both in terms of workmanship, composition or scale, as well as in the textual layer. Stokłosa’s paintings are sensual and intelligent, appealing and repelling at the same time; there is often more to them than meets the eye, just like in the case of film noir.
He lives and works in Kraków, Poland.
