Stay Here 1

The main character in the paintings of Agata Bogacka is a young woman, whose image may be interpreted as a self-portrait of the artist. She is presented in relations with people who are close to her, in moments of carefully studying her body or grappling with diverse emotions, from melancholy to solitude or disappointment. Bogacka has developed a unique painterly language, which helps her tell stories about her own experience. One has the inescapable feeling that it is here, on canvas, that experiences and thoughts are being said out loud.

Stay Here 1 is one of the works whose focal point lies in the in-depth analysis of the mental condition. The flat, contoured colour patches, just like the other formal elements of the work – the framed composition and the powerful drawing – have been used to define emotions and build a deep, though unobvious, psychological portrait. The naked body against the light backdrop seems to be the focus of the entire narrative potential. It is literally uncovered,

just like a stage in a theatre when the curtain is raised. Bogacka quite skillfully uses this motif, which is popular in the history of painting. The black drapery, which turns out to be the hair of the figure in the front, is lifted by female hands. The woman in the portrait, turned away from the scene presented in the back, is the frame of the presentation – a window opened to an unknown story.

Though the inner life scenes painted by the artist are materialized in a concrete form, Bogacka avoids literality. The world of her emotions freely spills, like paint on canvas, and sometimes escapes, dripping in blotches. The self-portrait is not a cohesive image. The figure it presents is full of undertones. It comes out only by means of fragments, as if we were watching its reflection in a broken mirror. Every part of the mirror will accept and give back only a piece of the image which will never fall into a whole set, constantly demanding new supplements. One such attempt at supplementing is the painting titled Zostać tu 2 [Stay Here 2], which is a counterpart to the work discussed.

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