4 September - 11 October 2015
vernissage: Friday, 4 September 2015, 7 pm

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 The exhibition of recent paintings by Ewa Juszkiewicz - winner of the Grand Prix of the 41st Biennale of Painting "Bielska Jesień 2013" comprises two cycles created by the artist during the last two years. Borrowed from a poem by the American Modernist poet William Carlos Williams, the title of the exhibition The Descent Beckons connects the two cycles with a common strand of interpretation.

The first series of works, which she is already known for, are paintings inspired by famous, especially female, portraits. It was for her two portraits - Girl in Blue and Untitled. According to Rogier van der Weyden that Ewa Juszkiewicz received the Grand Prix in the competition "Bielska Jesień 2013". These works, and the entire cycle, shaped the dialectic of creation and destruction which has been present in Ewa Juszkiewicz's creative activity since 2012.

 

         

 

"The artist reinterprets, i.e. destroys and recreates, familiar female portraits. She processes classic paintings by depriving them of their obviousness and familiar order, and thus creates her own galleries of new images. Juszkiewicz builds a new narrative by transforming, fragmenting, or changing the context of her selection of works." - says the curator of the exhibition Agnieszka Rayzacher commenting on the artist's previous cycle of portraits.

 

          

Ewa Juszkiewicz's latest cycle of paintings, which will have its premiere in Galeria Bielska BWA, has been inspired by a number of lost works of art. The theme of destruction and recreation returns with a vengeance. The artist's selection of original works is not accidental. The chosen works illustrate her own memories of events, places or people she has regrettably lost along the way.

 

"The second series of paintings has been created especially for the exhibition at Galeria Bielska BWA, and is based on the works of art that are considered lost to theft, fire or war. Like previously, Ewa Juszkiewicz uses only photographs, which this time are mostly black-and-white, poor quality photos, often found in decades-old archive materials. This gives the artist freedom in the selection of colours, thanks to which these modern versions of the lost masterpieces are given free interpretations and, as in the case of the series of portraits, and become a leaven of sorts which the artist uses for her new explorations." - says Agnieszka Rayzacher.

The exhibition arrangement at Galeria Bielska BWA is reminiscent of the Dadaist "Merzbau" - a structure built of daily discards - by Kurt Shwitters, and thus becomes a metaphor for the impermanence of material objects which give way to new meanings and ideas.

"The exhibition by Ewa Juszkiewicz poses the question about the meaning of reconstruction of damaged or missing works of art. This does not show the irrelevance of such action, nor does it undermine the legitimacy of attachment to the past and longing for the lost. These natural emotions still constitute a very important part of culture, and the exhibition itself is based on nostalgia as the driving force behind the artist's activity" - says Agnieszka Rayzacher.

 

Ewa Juszkiewicz was born in 1984 in Gdańsk; degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts which she defended under Professor Maciej Świeszewski in 2009; winner of the Grand Prix of the Painting Biennale "Bielska Jesień" in 2013 and 2011; winner of the 3rd Festival of Young Art" Draught "in Szczecin (2011). Her artistic pursuits include drawing, collage, sculpture and animation, but it is painting that truly makes her feel in her element. She also creates curatorial projects, such as the exhibitions Dirty Water and Beautiful Weather which she prepared jointly with Paulina Ołowska and showed at the National Gallery of Art in Sopot and the Foksal Foundation Gallery in Warsaw in 2011. She participated in the exhibition What You See at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2013). She was among the five Poles included in the book 100 Painters of Tomorrow published in autumn 2014 by Thames & Hudson in London. In 2014 she was invited to Maurizio Catellan's exhibition Shit and Die in Turin's Palazzo Cavour, which caused quite a stir in art circles. In 2015, she participated in a couple of international exhibitions presenting the achievements of Polish art: Procedures for the Head at the Kunsthalle Bratislava and State of life. Polish Contemporary Art in a Global Context at the National Art Museum in Beijing. She was number one - jointly with Bartosz Kokosiński (also winner of "Bielska Jesień 2013") in an important ranking of young Polish artists called the Compass of Young Art 2014 which was organised by Kama Zboralska and Piotr Cegłowski and held under the aegis of the daily Rzeczpospolita.
The artist cooperates with the gallery lokal_30 in Warsaw, where she held a solo exhibition at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014.

See the artist's website >>

Exhibition curator - Agnieszka Rayzacher.

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Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. 

 

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