Rafal Topolewski

Rafal Topolewski’s work explores the boundary between the abstract and figurative from multiple perspectives. Through considered composition, he is interested in examining the banal or the trivial. Taking inspiration from dreams and from the space that holds both sleeping and waking, Topolewski’s work is a personal investigation of  his own private consciousness. He often uses and disrupts familiar visual forms to undermine presuppositions. By using incomplete repetition or broken sequences to interrupt rationality, Topolewski recreates disorientation and alienation. Topolewski’s work holds an atmospheric intensity that gives gravity to the mundane. 

Rafal Topolewski was born in Grudziadz, Poland in 1983. He studied architecture at the Wroclaw University of Technology, before receiving a BA in Fine art from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2012. He went on to study Fine Art at the Royal Academy of Arts, graduating with a Postgraduate Diploma in 2016. His work has been exhibited in Lisbon, Los Angeles and across the UK.

He lives and works in Lisbon.