Wiktor Stribog
Wiktor Stribog
Wiktor Stribog is a multidisciplinary artist from Poland.
Stribog describes himself in the following words:
I’m Wiktor Stribog, content creator. You may know me as an author of “Smile Guide” (KrainaGrzybowTV). Or not.
(from Wiktor Stribog’s official Twitter account)
Style and recognition
Both the graphics and other forms of visual art and the music composed by Stribog, as well as some short texts, are densely intertwined.
In his work a heavy reference to the times of communism in Poland is pretty apparent. Stribog creates the graphics and videos in a way to resemble the old propaganda posters, tabloid article extracts, paraeducational shows and investigative documentaries.
The art created by the artist is influenced by everyday life in the 60s-90s, popular culture, low-quality children’s literature, school books and retro cartoons. They are made in a glitchy, grungy, noise-y manner, with the faded-but-once-overly-vivid, oversaturated, highly contrasted, reddish colour gamut.
The imitation of the “PPR1 style” is almost indistinguishable; the untrained eye would probably classify Stribog’s creations as some real “artefacts” from the PPR era. The shade of Soviet propaganda materials, socialist realism (so-called socrealizm and hauntology is very visible in WS’s work.
The essence, the spirit of (mostly working-class) Poland under the Soviet occupation, spiced and mingled with a dose of surrealism, a bit of veristic documentarism and a flavour of dread and horror.
All these stylistic measures create an absurd, hysteric sense of oppression and paranoia, reminiscent of the work of anti-communist writers, Witkacy and Franz Kafka in particular. In Stribog’s case, this might not be the intentional aim, though, as it seems rather to be designed more to serve purely “artistic expression” purpose than any hidden meaning ones. The psychedelic, uncanny grotesque of his art appears to be of an autotelic value, to be the process of creation and playing with convention per se what matters first.
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1Polish People’s Republic (People’s Republic of Poland)
Kraina Grzybów TV • Poradnik Uśmiechu
2014 – 2017
The artist became famous for creating the Kraina Grzybów TV, a fictional eighties-to-be TV channel, emitting eerie, uncanny youth programme-television guide, a series called “Poradnik Uśmiechu” (ENG: Smile Guide), which gained wide recognition among the alternative Internet scene. The show remained an enigmatic mystery for years, provoking many theories about its meaning, origin and creator. The style and atmosphere of KGTV was truly unsettling, tense and quite direful.
– Was it a weird programme from the times of the People’s Republic of Poland? Were the characters real? If yes, what happened to the little Agatha? Have anyone kidnapped her, was she hurt? Was the ominous squirrel Margo her captor? Why do they speak in such a bizarre way, each sentence with a heavily disturbed syntax? Is it anyhow related to the Soviet secret nuclear attack plans? Or is it a story about drugs?What’s going on? –
A great unknown, a puzzle unsolved, the Smile Guide bothered the internauts and (culture critics as well) for long.
Finally, it got revealed that the quizzical recordings were a project, created by Mr Stribog.
The artist also published a labyrinth exploration video game, SMILE GUIDE: the apple escape, featuring Agatha, the protagonist, as the main character. The game is stated to be the show’s last episode.
Besides the series and the game, additional multimedia regarding KGTV was created – artworks and short comics, shared on Stribog’s social media, a musical album with all the scores from the show, supposed newspaper articles and a book by Zofia Kopytlanka, a non-existent author.
When it was clearly known who was behind the project, it brought a little bit of disappointment to the hearts of the fans, but opened Stribog the door to a further career in the art field. Then, after the mystery solution and raising popularity of the creator himself, an official KGTV merchandise (Teufland) with his art was introduced.
Other projects
Before the renowned project, Stribog was creating music and doing minor art. He released an extended play, Furniture Population, in 2012.
After finishing with KGTV (though some extras are still being aired once in a while), he began working on the “gąski” (ENG: geese/goslings) and Berkelesz artwork/short story series. He also composed more music, mostly published in singles and EPs.
artist’s social links:
