The little bear says … oh! | Aleksandra Urban

Artist

Aleksandra Uraban

ABOUT EXHIBITION

The exhibition at Galeria Nova is the first show of the young artist’s work in Krakow. The works shown here, the artist’s latest activities, continue the previously undertaken topics and operate in a similar style. Works are not a closed cycle, connections are only slightly sketched.
Urban works present a kind of visions of the world. He values ambiguity, skillfully uses the style of kitsch – sometimes with elements of eroticism – it creates abundant, seemingly nonsensical compositions with the motifs, elements and symbols that make up it. An important element from which she draws motives to work is her past. As she says: “The echoes of dreams, memories and fantasies from my memory are a melange of what is pink, sweet and plush with irrational, but not only, fear and malice. When I was a child, my consciousness resembled a cabinet of peculiarities, but nothing has changed with the years, and the imagined fears took on real shapes. “The themes of the paintings presented in the exhibition are a combination of ideas, dream nightmares with dozens of quotes and borrowings hidden in the subconscious.
Recent works develop, probably to the greatest extent in the artist’s current activity, the duality of the children’s world and the world of adults who, through their sensitivity or hypersensitivity, never grow up. The atmosphere of the fairytale, joyful and full of colors of the world is reflected by the title of the exhibition and the titles of individual paintings (Behind the mountains behind forests, Icing). At the same time, a constant tension in the form of spewing nightmares, crawling cartoon characters and disturbing doodles is creeping into this calm, safe place of carefree. On the canvases, we find the surreal world of unreal characters and places that sometimes scares us, and all this accumulates together generates an atmosphere of panic. The artist determines the genesis of such a mood by associating it with the feelings that accompany the approaching adulthood. In this context, these works seem to reflect the state of mind of a generation of 30-year-olds, people who try to function in the adult world, while at the same time wanting to retain the privileges of a carefree childhood. “I am an adult man, I still feel tension and the same feeling of a child in me. Painting is a way to deal with this tension as a way to combat arachnophobia by taming a patient with a view of a spider, “Urban explains.
The exhibition at Galeria Nova is another artist’s presentation this year, after exhibitions in Warsaw and Wrocław.

Alexandra Urban
(Ur.17.03.1978)
A graduate of the faculty of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław. Scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 1998 and 2003.

exhibitions:
2008- Poisoned fruits – SPOT- Poznań.
2008 – Wonderland – Geppert flat, Wrocław.
2008 – Double check – LETO gallery, Warsaw.
2007 – International Image Biennale – Quadro Art, Łódź.
2007 – Edinburgh Art Festival – Art Space Gallery Edinburgh, England.
2007 – Project 2 + 2 + 1- Browar Mieszczański, Wrocław.
2006 – Promotions – BWA, Legnica.
2006 – XIII Salon Sztuki -Egeria, Ostrów Wielkopolski.
2006 – Pro Figura – Rostock, Germany.
2006 – GARDENING Biennale of Painting – BWA, Wałbrzych.
2004 – Diploma exhibition – BWA, Wrocław.
2004 – Biennial of Young Art – Rybie Oko 3, Słupsk