Norman Leto

Norman Leto - that is Łukasz Banach is an artist born on August 23, 1980 in Bochnia. He is a painter and writer, self-taught in painting, film and new media. His paintings, as well as his films, are marked by expressionistic and figurative features, they move, apart from personal, social motives.

As early as 1989, he created his first digital drawings using an Atari computer. In 1994, he began making his first short videos, this time with the Commodore Amiga. At the same time, he was developing analog drawing techniques and classical animation. In 1999, he made friends with Zdzisław Beksiński, thanks to whom he learned the basics of the painting workshop.

The debut individual exhibition of Norman Leto's works took place in 2007 at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. The artist presented video sequences and digital simulations of crowd behavior (based on artificial intelligence algorithms). The exhibition was called "Negative Aspects of Excessive Freedom at Age 26".

Also in 2007, the artist was invited to collaborate with Krystian Lupa on the theatrical play "Factory Two", for which Norman Leto prepared video sequences displayed during the performance. In 2007, the artist's first important video production was also made in 3D technology - it is entitled "Buttes Monteaux l" and was shown in Krakow's Art Agenda Nova. This presentation gained a lot of publicity as well as positive opinions from art critics. In the same year, Norman Leto's works were on display at the Jeune Création Européene biennial of young European art in Paris. In 2008, "Buttes Monteaux I" was purchased and included in the collections of the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

Norman Leto won the 4th place in the ranking "Kompas Młodej Sztuki 2008" kept by Rzeczpospolita. In 2009, his works were presented at the exhibition Aesthetics of Violence (Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel). In the same year, at the French Gare Saint-Sauveur in Lille, his works could be seen among fourteen young Polish artists (the exhibition was carried out in cooperation with the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw). In June of the same year at the National Museum in Krakow there was a screening of a video installation entitled Buttes Monteaux III.

Between 2009 and 2010, Leto spent time completing the novel and creating a semi-autobiographical film titled SAILOR, a loose adaptation of his book. The film was very well received at the 10th international festival Era Nowe Horyzonty, and the British weekly "Tribune" called it "the best and most surprising independent debut of the festival".

At the turn of 2010 and 2011, the artist took second place in the "Young Art Compass 2010".

In 2012, in addition to the series of paintings in progress, the artist began working on his second full-length "Photon". The film's European premiere took place in Copenhagen at the 2017 CPH: DOX * festival. The North American premiere took place at one of the world's largest documentary festivals, HotDocs Toronto, that same year. The Polish premiere took place in the same year, during the 17th T-Mobile New Horizons Festival. The film went to the main competition. That same year, Leto began working on another film production: "Pilot 9/11". In June 2017, Norman Leto appeared in the music video "I Promise" by Radiohead.

The works of this artist are in the collections of such institutions as: Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the National Museum in Krakow, the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, the ING Polish Art Foundation, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (MOCAK).