Bite Me by Bartosz Maria Chmielewski

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Bartosz Maria Chmielewski

Trying to find a niche for my work and materials other than the strictly jewellery ones, I came up with the idea of using insect chitin, a white type of insoluble cellulose present in the shell of arthropods.
The first time I used it, even as an undergraduate at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, I became so pleased with the result that I decided to do a degree in entomology, the study of insects. 10 years have passed and I'm still mesmerized with the cooperation of the beetles.

Beetles have always intrigued me, their colors and shapes that project plasticity, their fascinating "design" by nature simply begs to use their beauty to create.

This exhibition is called “Bite me” as a small joke as the works are actual beetles. However, it is also an expression used out of a subtle willingness to defy art criticism, which in recent years has strongly intensified and artists became entitled to impose "standards of good taste."

Moreover, the name describes, just as the pieces try to portray, my character of aggressiveness mixed with mockery and the fight against defiance.