Relatively spacious | Joanna Pawlik

Artist

Joanna Pawlik

ABOUT EXHIBITION

The second exhibition of paintings by Joanna Pawlik in Art Agenda Nova documents the last period of the artist’s work, showing in the fullest possible way the issues that Joanna is currently occupying. This presentation shows the recipient that formal experiments have significantly changed the artist’s painting, as well as an attempt to show the next stages of her artistic development.

Surprising for people following her achievements may be the fact that the artist associated strongly with the trend of figuration, a circle of optimistic themes, attached to the human figure almost completely resigns from it, still creating images related to reality, but not necessarily its positive aspects. There are images on the border of abstraction based on the rhythmic layouts of the solids, and as if in opposition to these ordered works, the artist allows herself in others for a freer, more expressive stain. The effects of streaks, spattered paint that seems to „explode” on the canvas, in other cases, subtly applied, a thin layer emphasize the lightness and spaciousness of these performances. The expression that dominated in the early period of the work of Joanna Pawlik returns in the latest works as an element accompanying thoughtful compositions. A new element is also the color of the canvases. So far, Joanna operated with a bright, clean color stain, her paintings were painted flat, and did not have the correct texture. Now fragments of canvas are intentionally unpainted, the colors are broken, the artist uses the range of violet, green and navy blue.

However, not only the formal aspect and the interesting way of combining painting on canvas with serigraphy, technique complementing her paintings deserves attention in the case of this exhibition. An important thing is the atmosphere, the specific climate of the whole, the specific anxiety that causes us to deal with something not fully realized, closer to the unspecified threat that everyone feels when looking at the void present in some works or their somewhat military character. There are associations of apocalyptic visions of ruined houses, explosions, situations in which it is difficult not to feel trapped. You can see here the desire to show how difficult it is to find yourself in reality, properly assess the situation, the direction of the search, your own place, capture and convey both objects available to sensual cognition, as well as ideas and emotions. Appearing objects, characters exist in some unknown reality, or actually unreality, float freely suspended in space.

The title of the exhibition „relatively spacious”, as the artist herself claims, „may refer to many matters, a specific interior, but also a living or mental space”.

The current exhibition consists of paintings that are not one coherent cycle, one can distinguish among them very thoughtful, „clean” constructional paintings with architectural pedigree, based on plans of objects from the 60s, very processed, striking contrasts of colors. There is also a motif of a modern city seen from above, which is unreal with a very subtle color scheme. Another theme presented by the artist is a series with planes, referring perhaps in the most literal way to the title of the exhibition, combining painting and graphics on the canvas, while the leitmotif of monochrome prints are photos of airports, hangars, aircraft, and family photographs. Another group that can be distinguished are images that bring to mind the depth of the cosmos – inscrutable and unrestricted, yet harmonious and orderly. Looking at them we have a feeling that the artist knows how to deal with chaos, in what direction she wants to move.

The exhibition can be watched until November 10.