From the shadow
The contemplative nature of Kasia Rysiak’s oeuvre contradicts today’s highly emotionalized, mainstream painting. Her quest for harmony and tranquillity manifests itself in building spatial relations between colour planes, textures, and the dynamics of lines – be it painted, cut-out, pasted or embroidered – and stems from the artist's interest in the phenomenological research into the intercourse between her works and their surroundings, their spatial resonance, the consonance of different works together, and the reverberations the works have on their author and on the viewers.
Rysiak’s activities almost immediately connote Constructivist legacy, epitomised by Wladyslaw Strzeminski’s ‘Architectural Compositions’, while also bringing to mind works by Jozef Robakowski (the ‘Energetic Angles’), Michal Budny’s abstract ephemera, and Rafal Bujnowski’s fascination with the colour black (incidentally, both Rysiak and Bujnowski like to use charcoal – Kasia is using coal dust to create subtle textures and gradients in her geometric compositions).
Introducing an element of poetic minimalism, Rysiak focuses on what is in between, on the margin, in the corner, or even beyond the artwork itself. Observing shadows cast by her paintings, she has elevated this motif into a separate theme, explored within a new body of work. Simultaneously, through the use of materials such as bookbinding canvas or cardboard, the artist intendedly alludes to traditional craft techniques and methods.
The minimalist, avant-garde ethos is challenged with subtle, however subversive gestures, introducing impressions of lightness, ephemerality and fragility. Semi-transparent veils that create layered, relief-like compositions, an element of spontaneity in regard to painting and embroidery applied on a piece of a loosely hung cloth, hues of bright neon colours that beam from underneath the work, and finally, canvases cut in the middle, whose loose threads tickle the eye – all this introduces elements of experimentation and play, inviting the viewer to have a closer look and to make themselves at home in the environment arranged by the artist.
Klara Czerniewska-Andryszczyk
The exhibition opening will take place on 26 October at 19:00
exhibition open: 26.10-05.11.2023
Wednesday-Friday 16-20
Saturday-Sunday 12-20
You're invited!
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