The mask is a form inseparably bound up with human culture. It can be object and subject. An ideological model, an archetype, an extension of the body.

The mask is a form of tribal belonging, a fact that takes on new meaning during the ongoing pandemic.

Michał Żabko-Potopowicz presents us with maquettes / models of sixteen masks.

These are masks stripped of their function. Sculptures focused on frontal expression. Forms approaching folk art / art brut, but zeroed out with white.

These primitive, raw objects are made on the scale of a slightly enlarged portrait, a theatrical or ritual mask. Each of the sculptures has a unique character of formal features that are fully open to interpretation.

The series was made in 2007.

An exhibition by graphic arts students of the Academy of Fine Arts summing up their work in the SITO/CYFRA Studio of Dr hab. Mateusz Dąbrowski and Łukasz Zembaty in the 2020/2021 academic year.

Małgorzata Bandurska, Gosia Bojko, Klara Borys, Julia Brzózka, Weronika Buling, Janek Dopierała, Sonia Dąbrowska, Patrycja Gos, Luiza Grabowska, Olga Grygiel, Olga Ilicheva, Klaudia Karpińska, Maria Karnkowska, Mikołaj Kiziniewicz, Marta Krupa, Zuzanna Las, Katarzyna Lenarczyk, Zofia Leszczyńska, Ania Lewandowska, Maria Lisicka, Julia Medoń, Katarzyna Mliczek, Nhat Anh Nguyen, Weronika Nowak, Liza, Maria Pakier, Zofia Pawlińska, Zuzanna Pieńkowska, Natasza Pleśniak, Zuzanna Podpora, Agata Popik, Karolina Porzycka, Agnieszka Probola, Maria Rutyna, Natalia Skipirzepa, Adam Skrzypiec, Maciej Sobański, Alicja Sobiepańska, Aleksandra Sowińska, Janek Stanisławski, Natalia Suchta, Basia Synak, Maria Tołwińska, Karolina Wyka, Basia Zientek

In 2017 groups of refugees from Chechnya gathered at the Polish border in Brest, trying to find political asylum in our country. Mainly women with children fleeing persecution and torture by Ramzan Kadyrov's regime.

The exhibition is a collection of reflections by artists connected with the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw on the "appropriation" of the title. Each work presents an entirely different face of the issue, showing how many possible transgressions lie behind it. Added meaning comes from the humanitarian crisis unfolding on the Polish-Belarusian border, to which the poster and graphic design of the exhibition refer.

The event belongs to a series of presentations connected with research into public space by the team of lecturers from the Department of Spatial Activities at the Faculty of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

The exhibition "Koniec świata też może być ładny" [The End of the World Can Be Pretty Too] is a collection of paintings about the end (or ends) of the world of the title. The artist draws on motifs recorded as his own memories and on those borrowed from mass culture, through "watching". A holiday memory mingles with a vision of the coming catastrophe and of a world in which only traces of human presence remain.

The exhibition title "Prace domowe" [Homework], which encompasses mundane chores such as cooking, washing or cleaning, refers here to practices of a sub-magical nature. Using everyday objects, the artists look for a way to domesticate the home space or to ground their origins.

"Paradoksalnie, życie wciąż zaskakuje mnie, albo i nie" [Paradoxically, Life Keeps Surprising Me. Or Maybe Not] - diploma exhibition by Antek Lisowski, presenting paintings that culminate his studies at the Warsaw ASP. The artist explores issues of identity, asking whether a series of formally varied paintings can maintain coherence in content. Painting practice meets performance; Lisowski seeks to establish a dialogue between both fields of his creative work. Assuming the alter ego Zenon Niezgoda, he engages the audience in a search for meaning in the space between the canvases.

Gap

Inflow

Flow

Passing

The exhibition „Nowy grunt” [New Ground] presented works by Andrea Beggio, Federico Caponi, Michał Chojecki, Mikołaj Chylak, Paweł Dobrowolski, Monika Duliasz, Karolina Jastrzębska, Karolina Lubaszko, Natalia Łajszczak, Marcin Minasowicz, Paulina Mirowska, Jędrek Owsiński, Agnieszka Pasierska, Magda Paszewska, Kasia Rysiak, Agnieszka Wach, Błażej Worsztynowicz, Łukasz Zembaty and Michał Żabko-Potopowicz.

The show, held on 13-14 March 2021, presented the work of the residents of Pracownia Wschodnia, who joined forces to create „new ground” for the development of culture in Warsaw. The works presented the process of transforming the old into the new, creating a metaphor of solid foundations for a space of creative activity. In difficult times, culture needed, as the artists stressed, „NEW GROUND!”.

The exhibition Zredukowane [Reduced] by Paulina Mirowska presented a collection of visual impressions of trees in urban space. The works, based on photography, installation and sculpture, illustrated various aspects of the restrictions imposed on trees by infrastructure. They were united by a monochrome style that lent real objects a symbolic character. The exhibition ran from 13 February to 27 February 2021.

I pass trees fenced in, squeezed in, flooded with concrete. Leaning against façades, grown into metal. Branches nestling against windowpanes, roots pushing up pavements. Some trees grew wild on the roofs of blocks of flats, in the recesses of a protruding cornice, on gravestones. Others, within a few years, were impaled on a fence and joined those that had been growing with them for years. In Skaryszewski Park many trees were decorated with reflective markers – I looked online to understand what was about to happen. On Wiejska Street, boughs were locked in metal stocks. I wondered what would happen once their diameter outgrew the size the locksmith had allowed for. In some places they hung, dried out on fences, like a hunter's trophies. Small, large, stout, old, young. Great branches lopped off for safety. Boughs artificially straightened. Designated places: "grow here", "reach a size no larger than", "look nice", "don't shed your leaves".

The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with original texts by Krystyna Jędrzejewska Szmek, Jaś Kapela and Łukasz Gniadek: https://paulinamirowska.eu/zredukowane-zin/.

Paulina Mirowska

Visual artist and activist. Born in 1987 in Warsaw. A graduate of the Faculty of Multimedia Communication at the University of the Arts in Poznań, in Photography and in Graphic Design and Visual Communication. She worked in the Photography Studio at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 2011.

She took an active part in independent activities, both group and individual, combining and developing the fields of analogue photography, sculpture, printmaking and self-publishing. Drawing on her knowledge, she engaged in social activism, running multidirectional artistic projects. She co-authored many community events and installations.

She was a member of the collective Grupa JEST, the Pracownia Wschodnia Association and the screen printing studio PHU Sitex.

paulinamirowska.eu

grupajest.blogspot.com

phusitex.blogspot.com