vernissage - Thursday, 7 September, 6 pm

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A solo exhibition of Martyna Czech's paintings created within the last two years. The artist is a fresh graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. Two years ago, she was awarded the Grand Prix - the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Award at the 42nd Biennale of Painting ‘Bielska Jesień 2015'. The new exhibition is a form of award traditionally presented by the Director of Galeria Bielska BWA to the Grand Prix winner.

In 2015, the jury of the Biennale acknowledged the finesse and originality of the works combined with simplicity and powerful use of elementary colours. The jury pointed out that the artist is capable of achieving a disturbing, magnetizing effect with the use of austere, almost primitive techniques.

The latest works reflect the artist's predilection for expressing difficult emotions and experiences of daily life, as well as critical evaluation of human attitudes and behaviours.

The exhibition in Bielsko comes hot on the heels of a couple of important events in the young artist's career. This June, she received the top visual arts award in the ‘Talents of Three' competition organized by the Polish Radio 3. Martyna Czech was praised for her "flippancy and boldness in the use of different forms of expression and traditions of painting, novel iconography, predatory style and out-of-the-ordinary approach which makes you want to wait with bated breath for more." Then in July, she became one of the 15 finalists of the Young Art Biennale ‘Rybie Oko 9', organized by the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Słupsk (the winners will be announced on 5 October 2017).

The exhibition ‘Venom' in Bielsko-Biała and the accompanying catalogue provide the most comprehensive presentation of Martyna Czech's work to date.

"The Grand Prix winner of Bielska Jesień 2015, Martyna Czech made the following comment at her exhibition in Galeria Potencja: ‘I've always devised complicated schemes that would allow me to survive, even in childhood. Sadly, these have been systematically ruined by other people, and I'd repeatedly find myself pushed to the limit. Filling gaps has always been a temporary solution, fleeting and irrelevant.' Now she uses painting to "fill the gaps'. This year's graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Czech exposes herself to a gruelling vivisection we have not seen in Polish painting for years. She paints fast and greedily, as if her works were life-size photographs of emotions, with no filter, like hasty notes jotted down on a cafe napkin or punched in on a mobile phone. The lurid titles: Tear, Rejection, Obsession, Temptation, make the statement even more emphatic without detracting from the general appeal. Czech's works are overflowing with paint, and the configurations of individual elements are so peculiar that it takes time before we realize what we are actually looking at. And what we are looking at are, in fact, three overriding themes: animal slaughter, toxic relationships, and, possibly encapsulating the two, sensuality, carnal knowledge, disease. Paint is the artist's yet another bodily fluid and the verisimilitude of her expression brings her work ever closer to abject art. Hers is affective art, a cardiogram of emotional highs and lows. She never gets carried away by an intellectual speculation or academic fad. If she sets her brush to the canvas, she does it as a consequence of personal experiences, impulses, reflexes, usually painful, traumatic, appalling ones. Her work is a reaction to foul behaviour of those close to her, to suffering - her own and other people's, to misery and unhealed wounds.

Martyna Czech paints with venom."

Jakub Banasiak, curator

Martyna Czech was born in Tarnów in 1990.

Degree from the Faculty of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Master's Degree with distinction in the department of Painting headed by Professor Andrzej Tobis ASP; Minor in Graphic Design - Literary Interpretations under Professor Grzegorz Hańderek (2017).

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 42th Biennale of Painting "Bielska Jesień 2015" in Galeria Bielska BWA in Bielsko-Biała (2015);

Finalist of the Young Art Biennale Rybie Oko 9 in the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Slupsk (2017);

Winner of the top award in the category of visual arts in the competition "Talents of Three" run by the Polish Radio 3 (2017).