Agnieszka Grodzińska
born 1984 in Opole
Lives and works in Poznań.
Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań in 2009.
Diploma in Artistic Education – Art Review, Art Promotion, Art Pedagogy (prof. Grzegorz Dziamski) and Painting (dr Wojciech Łazarczyk).
Co-founder of the Cut Crystal duo with Natalia Całus.
Individual exhibitions:
2011 Echo Park, Contemporary Art Gallery, Opole, Poland
2010 Objects and Views, Starter Gallery, Poznań, Poland
- Deselect Works, Atelier on the Odra, Opole, Poland
2009 New Drawings, Start Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
- Light Fever, Starter Gallery, Poznań, Poland
2008 You know that old story, Czynna Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
2007 Not so pretty as we think, they are ugly and they stink, Starter Gallery, Poznań, Poland
-Untitled, Outsiders Gallery, Poznań, Poland
2006 Sweet Face Black Heart, Enter Gallery, Poznań, Poland
Collective exhibitions (selected):
2011 Before Bulldozers Come, Starter Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
2011 Camouflage, Katarzyna Kobro Gallery, Łódź, Poland
2010 Dirty Flowers, Leto Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
2009 Draught – Youth Festival, Szczecin, Poland
-This Is Youth, Klima Bocheńska Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
-Maria Dokowicz Competition, ARSENAŁ Gallery, Poznań, Poland
-Survival #7 – Festival of Art In Extreme Conditions, Four Domes Pavilion, Wrocław, Poland
-Participation in Vienna ARTFAIR, Vienna, Austria
-Participation in Volta fair, New York, USA
-Figurama, Prague-Poznań-Ceske Budejovice-Brussels, Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium
2007 Sme tutaj/We Are Here, Považska Galeria Umenia, Žilina, Slovakia
-Nikdy nebolo lepsie / It’s Never Been Better, Stanica, Žilina, Slovakia
2006 Young City Festival, Koszary Sztuki, Świnoujście, Poland
Kunstsalon Art Fair, Berlin, Germany
Cut Crystal Group exhibitions:
2010 Niagara, Old Abattoir, Poznań, Poland
2009 Between 30-35, Old Printing House, Poznań, Poland
-Figurama, Prague-Poznań- Ceske Budejovice-Brussels
-No Logo, Przychodnia Gallery, Poznań, Poland
2008 Natural Sprinters, Starter Gallery, Poznań, Poland
-Automatons, ON Gallery, Poznań, Poland
-Art Must Be Beautiful, prof. Izabella Gustowska’s students, Old Brewery, Poznań, Poland
-Playground, Starter Gallery, Poznań, Poland
2006 Liveevil, Plastyfikatory Gallery, Luboń, Poland
Grants and awards:
2011* Grant beneficiary, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
2009* “Young Poland” grant, Ministry of Culture and National heritage
Selected publications:
2011 Echo Park, ed. Morava Book (in preparation)
2011 Illustrations to Niecne Memy. Twelve Lectures on the Culture of the Internet by M. Kamińska, ed. Arsenał
2010 Guilt for Four, picture edition, ed. Morava Book
2009 Light Fever, exhibition catalogue, Poznań 2009
2008 Illustrations to Nowa Fala Popierdala, ed. Art Bazaar
2008 Art Must Be Beautiful exhibition catalogue (text)
2007 Publication The Nice and the Sad, Poznań, 2007
Agnieszka Grodzińska’s artistic projects are not attempts to look for images which denote phenomena, but rather revealing meanings in the world of constant returns. They search for the sense of visual imagery by discovering a new formula for its existence. Her works reflect on the state and potential of contemporary painting. At the same time, they try to delineate the limits of this medium and accept its conventionality. The artist’s work include Light Fever, Niagara, Echo Park (a Młoda Polska grant project), Domestic Saturation and Office Saturation. Grodzińska’s latest works bring a double change in her point of view. The focus does not only shift from the content and symbols to the reality of the picture itself, but also to its way of presentation in various media. The space between the symbol and reality, the sign and phenomenon, has been diminished. It may even be said that each picture includes another picture. That accepted, we may ask – which pictures, then, will penetrate the ones that have not been created yet, and in which medium? To what extent will it be possible to change the code of their perception? The past offers no comparisons which would allow us to learn new codes. The construction logic of Agnieszka Grodzińska’s works is only known to the pictures themselves because they are not mirrors, reflections or hallucinations. They set their own rules, to which we have no access, yet their irony remains unlimited. It is a paradox reserved for art.
Wojciech Łazarczyk
No title, from Echo Park cycle, collage on slides, 2011
“Recurrence, original-copy relationships, reproducing and producing pictures, processing the virtual and analogue ones (art books and albums) – is a broad range of topics which Agnieszka Grodzińska tackles with a researcher’s zeal. (…) In the post-production process chosen by the artist as a creative method, she interferes with the already processed material (book reproductions, found footage fragments), but also her own (photographs). The most fascinating thing is that while creating her own paintings, she bestows their inalienable coherence and originality with a sense, or even the idea, of copying. She reproduces something familiar, something that has been, the echo from the title, whose sound originates in our superficial knowledge and memory, so sensitive to the visual. The artist creates, intentionally reproducing, and in fact she is entirely successful in this risky undertaking. In the times of wiki-pictures – out of context, out of format, out of technique and origin – even the original is but a temporary background for our activity, references, artistic tourism. Just a still life with a picture in the background.”
Marika Zamojska
Excerpt from her text “Echo Park – a still life with a picture in the background”
To Put Together, from Echo Park cycle, puzzle, plank, 30 x 20, 2011
“(…) In Agnieszka Grodzińska’s new works there is an important motif – looking. A mere glimpse, analytical scrutiny, painstaking tracking, a quick assessing glance, a dreamy gaze, spirited contemplation, skeptical examination, mindless gaping –they are all different ways of consuming a piece of art. After all, it is the sense of sight which is the only available tool allowing us to experience painting.
How does a viewer react to an abstract picture emanating the emancipated language of painting? Usually the mind, as if afraid of the unknown, uses the evasion mechanism and ascribes the illogical images to the shapes that are known, already tamed. It resembles identifying actual shapes in shapeless clouds. As if we were afraid there could be something that does not mean anything. Seeing a picture, we want to “know for sure”, finishing the work in our mind instead of accepting it the way it is."(1)
Anna Miczko
Excerpt from her text accompanying the “Echo Park” project
(1) Hubert Damisch, A Cadmium-Yellow Window, Gdańsk 2006, p. 34
Perfectly Abstract Educational Machine, drawing, 27 x 34, 1983-2011
