Agata Bogacka
18 Nov - 23 Dec 2006
AGATA BOGACKA
"Heart"
Opening - 18th of November 2006 at 6 pm - 9 pm
The exhibition will be open until December 23rd
Agata Bogacka's (born 1976) latest works differ significantly from the ones exhibited during her first solo show in Raster in 2004. Her paintings have become multilayered, both in the sense of composition, color and content. Plain figural scenes have yielded to sequences of events taking place in one picture. It is the viewer's task to arrange the narrative - Agata's recent paintings remind one of a projection of mixed up, overlapping slides, which form utterly new stories on the canvas screen.
The course of events depends largely on the viewer's imagination and the artist herself does not conceal the fact that the creative process was based on the surrealist game of (the lack of) associations between subsequent motifs. But the distinctive aura of Bogacka's works remains the same - eroticism is invariably tinged with sadness, longing and lack of fulfillment, yet at the same time, one of the most beautiful features of the exhibition is a seductive pregnant nude in the painting Invitation (Zaproszenie). Leaving the verbatim portraits and self-portraits, characteristic of her earlier works, aside the artist seems to take on the role of a perverse voyeur, observing the world from behind a veil, through a curtain of hair, from the inside of an open mouth, or from between her thighs. In their decorativeness, the flat-painted canvases resemble the erotically allusive language of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, or the (historically closer) painting of Jurry Zielinski. Simultaneously, the painter plays a game with the two-dimensional convention of the canvas, literally opening it, by cutting holes in the character's mouth or placing mirrors in their eyes. Thus experiencing her painting becomes more physical and the voyeuristic act even more ambiguous - what is on the surface, what hides deeper, and what lies below the painting's surface?
For the first time the exhibition will feature Agata Bogacka's photographs. Until recently, the photos taken by the artist served primarily as study material and basis for her sketches. But since not long ago, they began to form a separate whole, distinct from the paintings. While referring to the convention of home-made snapshots and the poetics of an intimate photo diary, the photographs capture situations which were, at least to some extent, staged by the artist. These are peculiar, minute, private allegories of different emotional states. The photos form a thought-out, though at times perverse and deeply self-ironic, portrait of the artist - a four-legged painter who sneaks out of her studio at dark.
In December, Agata Bogacka's paintings will also be presented at the Polish Painting of the 21st Century (Malarstwo Polskie XXI wieku) exhibition in the Warsaw Zacheta Gallery.
"Heart"
Opening - 18th of November 2006 at 6 pm - 9 pm
The exhibition will be open until December 23rd
Agata Bogacka's (born 1976) latest works differ significantly from the ones exhibited during her first solo show in Raster in 2004. Her paintings have become multilayered, both in the sense of composition, color and content. Plain figural scenes have yielded to sequences of events taking place in one picture. It is the viewer's task to arrange the narrative - Agata's recent paintings remind one of a projection of mixed up, overlapping slides, which form utterly new stories on the canvas screen.
The course of events depends largely on the viewer's imagination and the artist herself does not conceal the fact that the creative process was based on the surrealist game of (the lack of) associations between subsequent motifs. But the distinctive aura of Bogacka's works remains the same - eroticism is invariably tinged with sadness, longing and lack of fulfillment, yet at the same time, one of the most beautiful features of the exhibition is a seductive pregnant nude in the painting Invitation (Zaproszenie). Leaving the verbatim portraits and self-portraits, characteristic of her earlier works, aside the artist seems to take on the role of a perverse voyeur, observing the world from behind a veil, through a curtain of hair, from the inside of an open mouth, or from between her thighs. In their decorativeness, the flat-painted canvases resemble the erotically allusive language of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, or the (historically closer) painting of Jurry Zielinski. Simultaneously, the painter plays a game with the two-dimensional convention of the canvas, literally opening it, by cutting holes in the character's mouth or placing mirrors in their eyes. Thus experiencing her painting becomes more physical and the voyeuristic act even more ambiguous - what is on the surface, what hides deeper, and what lies below the painting's surface?
For the first time the exhibition will feature Agata Bogacka's photographs. Until recently, the photos taken by the artist served primarily as study material and basis for her sketches. But since not long ago, they began to form a separate whole, distinct from the paintings. While referring to the convention of home-made snapshots and the poetics of an intimate photo diary, the photographs capture situations which were, at least to some extent, staged by the artist. These are peculiar, minute, private allegories of different emotional states. The photos form a thought-out, though at times perverse and deeply self-ironic, portrait of the artist - a four-legged painter who sneaks out of her studio at dark.
In December, Agata Bogacka's paintings will also be presented at the Polish Painting of the 21st Century (Malarstwo Polskie XXI wieku) exhibition in the Warsaw Zacheta Gallery.