Maciej Gąbka is an interdisciplinary artist whose artistic expression encompasses sculpture, object art and photography. In his practice, the author explores the impact of normative systems on society - the ethical and moral qualification of human norms. Maciej Gąbka's work focuses on the exploration and understanding of the factors that force people to make everyday decisions, evaluations, or give them a sense of duty to perform specific actions.
In the exhibition User Experience, Maciej Gąbka presents his latest works - reliefs and sculptures - illustrating the relationship between humans and objects, which is created through their physical acquaintance. The title refers to the term "User Experience" (UX), which describes the general feelings and impressions that people experience when interacting with everyday products, services or systems. It includes not only functionality and usability, but also emotional, aesthetic and contextual aspects. Each piece is accompanied by a research-based commentary that discusses and makes sense of specific standards and explains representations of normative behaviour. The exhibition portrays our everyday life, where any behaviour seen as going beyond the norm is noticed and has consequences. The objects in the exhibition reveal how we follow established rules and perceive the world through normative filters, allowing viewers to make connections between the works in the exhibition and their own personal everyday experiences. The role of the artist here becomes similar to that of a designer, who constructs the forms of ordinary objects based on statistics and observations of visual culture. Meanwhile, the aim of User Experience becomes to ensure that the interaction between the human and the product, in this case the viewer, is intuitive and effective, thus increasing user engagement.
Maciej Gąbka (b. 1993) graduated with a BA in Graphic Arts (2017) and an MA in New Media Art Studies (2020) from the University of the Arts in Poznań. He has been actively participating in exhibitions since 2019 in Poland and abroad. The artist has held five solo exhibitions and participated in more than 17 group exhibitions. In 2022, the artist's series of works Get out of the way was presented at the Spectra Art Space of the Starak Family Foundation, a renowned Polish art foundation. Maciej Gąbka has won numerous achievements in the field of culture and has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships, such as the Polish Cultural Foundation Scholarship (2014), twice winner of the Hestia Artistic Jorney (2016, 2019), was awarded the Alicja Kepinska Prize (2017, 2020), and was the winner of the 10th Poznań Graphic Biennial. The artist currently lives and works in Warsaw.
