ANNA PANEK. Grundlagen

I like when shapes react to each other like living organisms
 
Part of an interview by Aleksandra Czerniawska with Anna Panek
concerning the “Grundlagen” exhibition at Arsenal Gallery in Białystok
 
 
Aleksandra Czerniawska: Can you tell us what we will see in your exhibition?
 
Anna Panek: Everything you will find there will be related to painting that is engaged in the sensual and emotional world. There will be canvas paintings. There will be colorful cutouts, which I will arrange to create a scattered image in the gallery. Maybe a sketch or two, to show where I started from… the beginnings of my thinking about this exhibition.
 
We are sitting here at your home, and the exhibition still doesn’t exist. What you showed me before were drawings made on a computer in ArchiCAD?
 
In AutoCAD. This is drawing software used by architects and engineers.
 
So this is a technical drawing, in which we have lines that define shapes. Shapes cut out very precisely from panels are lying behind the computer, and we have some of the painted shapes here too. You get the feeling that this is 100% engineered. You could just as well pack these shapes into a box, stick the drawing on top and send it to be assembled by a team. The rest would do itself.
 
That’s not quite right, because despite appearances, this is not an engineering project. What you see drawn on the computer is a sketch of a certain idea. When I paint these shapes and introduce them into the space, they will begin to work together with it. They are essentially dead without space. These shapes are also built in a way that gives me a multitude of possibilities. I could arrange this exhibition in several different ways, even up to the double-digits. I haven’t designed its final shape yet. That I will decide on-site at Arsenal Gallery. When I enter a space, I react to it, and now I am working in a completely different space, much smaller than before.

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Anna Panek – a painter and architect, graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Wrocław University of Technology and Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The scope of her work includes paintings, murals, installations in the context of architecture. Anna received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, finalist of the Samsung Art Master competition, researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Her works have been shown in: CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Lives and works in Warsaw.

Related event:
29 April 2017, 11.00
Artist and curator-led tour with Polish Sign Language interpreter
Free entry