courtesy of ART AGENDA NOVA, Krakow, nova.art.pl

Opening on November 6, 2009 at 6 p.m.
Open until December 6, 2009

Norman Leto was born in 1980 in Bochnia. He is a self-educated artist. He produces installations, objects, and most of all 3-D animation works. He participated in group exhibitions such as Establishment (and Its Discontents), CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2008); blankly, perfect summer. Young Media Artists from Krakow, vertexList Gallery, New York (2008); Power Games. Contemporary Art from Poland, Haifa Museum of Art (2009).
His films are futurological visions of art and life for which physical space is insufficient; this is why they are realized with the use of 3-D graphics algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. They take the viewer for a walk around cyber space filled with installations of unique physical qualities, such as their own gravity, or density. Most of the films are based on autobiographical themes; they refer to stories or episodes that the artist observed, or to his personal reflections on the ways an individual is socially determined. (…)
Although at first sight it is difficult to believe it, Norman Leto’s films are animations. They seem to be documents filmed with a hand-held camera, but actually they are made with programmes used for the production of 3-D graphics. “The so-called reality is highly overrated,” states Leto. This is why his artistic strategy brings to mind actions of a demiurge who has, as the artist claims, “a power to create internally coherent alternative reality with precisely calculated laws of physics.” The effect is emphasized by the fact that Leto appears in his films as a narrator. (...)

Marcin Krasny
fragments of the text from the “ArtBoom” catalogue,
ed. Małgorzata Gołębiewska,
Krakow Festival Office, Krakow, 2009
translated by Karolina Kolenda

Norman Leto
Born 1980 in Bochnia, Poland, lives and works in Krakow.
Self-taught painter and video artist, currently works with paintings and making movies or experiments with virtual reality systems.

Solo exhibitions:
2007 Negative Aspects of an overdosed freedom at the age of 26. Paintings (debut), Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
2007 Buttes Monteaux song with video clip and three oil paintings, Art Agenda Nova, Krakow, Poland
2007 I am so warm and calm inside, I no longer have to hide, Folia Concept Club, Krakow, Poland

Selected group exhibitions:
2009 Visual Arts Festival ArtBoom, Krakow, Poland
2009 Half of twin for sale, Norman Leto & Konrad Smoleński, City Gallery Arsenal, Poznan, Poland
2009 Power Games. Contemporary Art from Poland, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel
2008 Establishment (and Its Discontents), Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
2008 blankly, perfect summer. Young Media Artists from Krakow, vertexList, New York, USA
2007 Jeune Création Européenne, biennale of young European art, Paris, France
2007 Video Now Vol. 3, video art, Center of Movie Arts, Katowice, Poland

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