Exhibition documentation
Tissues, HOS Gallery, Warsaw
Artists: Karolina Majewska, Kaja Wielowiejska, Justyna Adamczyk, Adrianna Konopka, Justyna Kosińska, Magdalena Ciemierkiewicz
Curator: Katarzyna Piskorz
Tissue, a single word that captures a multitude of ephemeral associations such as a set of cells, organs, medicine, histology, body, remains, relics, hunting trophies, shreds, remnants, matter, system, or specific function. These are associations that can only be sensed subcutaneously. Beneath the tissue.
The artistic tissue of the works of six Warsaw artists is a broad spectrum of means of expression, which includes drawing, painting, collage, and ebru technique, but also embroidery, sculpture as well as installation. The works situate themselves, or perhaps mooch or ball, somewhere between figurativeness and abstraction, fairy tale and nightmare, and filigree and drabness, brutality on the verge of the macabre.
There is a relentless return of black, a color associated with esotericism, ritual, death, mourning, atonement, and the absolute, as well as the circle symbolizing perfection, unity, and the feminine element. Both canvases, ceramic molds, and wax casts demand our touch. The airy ephemerality of the paper paradoxically corresponds with the massiveness of the antlers and dead branches used in the installations. In the case of all the works, this multiform and complex artistic fabric is shrouded in a nimbus of mystery, spirituality, and mysticism. The laboriousness and repetitiveness of the gesture of embroidering, sewing on beads, and molding small ceramic elements requires patience and regularity, while at the same time locating the work in the area between therapy and contemplation, almost a ritual.
