AGATA BOGACKA – Itinerary

ITINERARY

It is an itinerary of a journey that never takes place, because the basic condition is not fulfilled: there is no displacement. However despite the movement being minimal – perhaps just the movement of eyes, walking around the room, contemplating the tea and conversation – one must agree that the journey is a fact.

It’s a journey stripped of all elements that constitute it – all but one: the way of perception. By this, spaces that at first glance seem small, e.g. space between us, during our conversation, turns into almost recognizable landscapes, like a non-existent sky over a non-existent lake. Here you can create sunsets from elements never used before. It’s like abandoning the attempts of travelling into distant and undefined space, where you always looked the wrong way; watching the reflection in the water was more important than watching the city, forest, sky or you. The only thing which remained was a distorted image of something that definitely existed, but did not win with our habit of looking. Small spaces are like fitting lenses to eyesight in order to open spaces, which weren’t there.

The mode of perception makes a journey.

It’s making plans for a self-realising journey.

Agata Bogacka
 

Agata Bogacka works with painting, drawing and photography. Her art is a unique, at least on Polish art scene, combination of formal refinement and deeply emotional biography. The paintings formed an emotional journal of the artist, combining a synthetic, poster-like, highly stylised form with engaging, intelligent narrations. Her paintings consistently include smooth backgrounds and because of that are devoid of realistically presented spacial depth. The compositions are deeply thought through, without any redundant details. Distance, both physical and psychological – intimacy or loneliness – is one of the key elements of her paintings. Her graduation work (2001) consists of a series of paintings, which are variations on a theme of famous works of art, such as “The Death of Marat” by Jaques-Louis David, “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” and “Olympia” by Manet. The protagonists are the artist’s peers: they use cell-phones, Marat is not dying and swimming suit tan marks are visible on Olympia’s body. Bogacka’s graduation paintings are characterized by expressive and original style, which became the artist’s trademark: painted with acrylics on canvas, flat patches of colour on a usually monochrome background are brought out by strong graphic contour. The actual acts of painting were preceded by photographic sessions with models – usually people close to the artist, with whom she was emotionally connected. Such paintings were presented on a collective exhibition “Really, the young are realists” (CSW Warsaw, 2002) and individual exhibition “I’m bleeding!” (CSW Warsaw, 2003).

The exhibition „Shortest way home” (RASTER, 2004) foreshadowed a visible change in the artist’s oeuvre. Anecdote and literal meanings disappeared from her paintings – analysis of subconsciousness appeared in their place. The characteristic contour disappeared, consequently the vision of world became more fluid, harder to define, sometimes even abstract. The protagonists of the paintings from that time enclose themselves in their own world, it’s hard to define their mental state. This time the artist avoids literal meaning and does not tell us what is happening in the paintings while the protagonists hide their faces behind their hair.

In the „Heart” (Raster, 2006) and „Second Half of Hear” (Potocka Gallery, Krakow, 2007) exhibitions, Agata Bogacka’s paintings became multi-level in their subject matter, as well as in colour and composition. Simple figural presentations gave place to a sequence of events taking place simultaneously on one canvas. The reading of this chain of narration is the viewer’s task. Going away from portraits and self-portraits, characteristic of her earlier works, the artist took the role of a voyeur, looking at the world from behind a curtain, through hair covering the eyes, from inside an open mouth or from between the legs. The artist is at the same time playing with the two-dimensional convention of the painting and literally opens it – by cutting slits in mouths or placing mirrors in the protagonists’ eyes. The experience of painting becomes more physical, and the voyeuristic act even more ambiguous – what is on the surface, what lies deeper and what hides under the painting’s surface?

Drawings presented in Potocka Gallery come from the “Heart” cycle, which are a peculiar self-portrait, inspired by the artist reflection in a golden heart-shaped necklace worn by her. The drawings can be related to a feeling of absence, seclusion, impossibility of completion, integration of one’s identity. These drawings were the beginning of more abstract and conceptual stage in her work, at the same time ending the period of figural presentation.

The paintings presented in the “Itinerary” exhibition in Arsenal Gallery are the next step in her artistic evolution – a step toward metaphorical, subjective landscape-space.

Sources: www.raster.art.pl, www.culture.pl, artpapier.com