Ryszard Wasko (Waśko) (born February 21, 1947, in Nysa) is a Polish artist, who has worked in multimedia, including photography, film, video, installation, painting, and drawing.

Workshop was an avant-garde collective of painters, filmmakers, critics, poets, philosophers and scientists, working with experimental film and multimedia.

"After studying film-making at the Academy in Lodz in the late sixties, Wasko went on to become one of Poland's leading conceptualists, working as a pioneer in the media of video and photography.

In other words, in order to grasp a work which belongs to a certain artistic genre in its specificity, one should refer to its non-specific features which are characteristic for another kind of art.

"[2] "It is impossible (...) to separate his activities as an artist (as a maker of installations, as a creator of paintings and works on paper) from his other endeavors as a curator, organizer, teacher, writer, agitator (...).

"[3] In 1981 in Lodz, Wasko initiated and organized Construction in Process, a series of exhibitions featuring works of art created on site.

"Wasko continued to produce international events into the nineties, including two additional projects in Lodz (1990 and 1993), one in Israel (1995), one in Australia (1997), and another,(...) in the small town of Bydgogosz in north central Poland (2000).

Besides numerous one-man-shows Wasko took part in several international exhitbitions e.g. at Centre Georges Pompidou, Kunsthalle Hamburg and the Venice Biennale (1991, 1999, 2001, 2007).

At the same time he lectured extensively in Europe, including at Saint Martin's School of Art, Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and Freie Kunstakademie in Essen.

It had developed into a worldwide network of locally run art centers, linking artists and intellectuals from diverse backgrounds, locations, and disciplines.

"[1] The Museum has organized and sponsored over 60 major international events, exhibitions, meetings, panels, concerts, readings, and projects focusing on art, culture, borders, community, and identity.

Due to political changes in the city government the building of the International Artist's Museum at Tylna Street 14 has been sold to a private Bank (1998).

"His paradoxical brand of conceptual humanism has always been toward developing a better world and more spiritually-oriented environment for artists in which they can produce work outside of marketing restrictions, and thus communicate ideas that will benefit common people.

Recent solo exhibitions include a retrospection at the Museum of History of the City of Lodz (Ryszard Wasko, Lodz – Berlin, works 1971–1996) in 2008 and at the Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin (Contemporary Portrait, Checkpoint Charlie Hypothetical) in 2009: "Ryszard Wasko zeigt in seiner gleichnamigen Malereiausstellung Bilder von Personen, die ihre Identität verbergen.

"The entire trajectory of Ryszard Wasko's career has comprised a substantial, in many ways risk-taking and innovative, extension and enlargement of the role of the artist.