Paulina Grobelny
Born in 1987 in Katowice, graduated from the Artistic Faculty at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, received her diploma with honours in 2012 (Prof. Kazimierz Cieślik’s studio of painting and Dr Lesław Tetla’s studio of interdisciplinary activities). She mainly deals in painting, but also photography, drawing and objects. A Ministry of Culture and National Heritage grant holder, she began her doctoral study in 2013 at the Faculty of Painting of Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts, Prof. Jarosław Modzelewski’s studio. She lives and works in Warsaw.
From 2008 to 2012, Paulina Grobelny was my student of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, receiving her diploma with honours in July 2012. The brilliant intellect, hard work and conscientiousness allowed her to deal with some initial shortcomings in painting technique in no time, so that in her third year she was ready for creative challenges defining her unique artistic “handwriting”.
Her works were specific sociological commentaries resulting from the observation of her closest environs rather than those dictated by the media. In her third-year paintings, she penetrated the hidden logic regulating the existence of terraced houses and their inhabitants – the new Polish middle class. A year later, she focussed on the amusement park “Silesian Funfair”, portraying it in late autumn and wintertime in an ostentatiously monochromatic manner. It allowed her to show objects intended to entertain in a way which introduced an atmosphere of threat they seemed to emanate.
And finally – her diploma works, devoted to excess, the surplus of objects, commodities determining the life of their owners and users. Apart from the series of paintings, her diploma presentation also featured an installation touching on the same problem. It was created in the interdisciplinary studio run by dr Lesław Tetla. Her essay accompanying the artistic part, entitled “Facing Excess” and written under dr Violetta Sajkiewicz’s supervision, proved the author’s erudition as well as her ability to support creative endeavours with well-aimed arguments, which she brilliantly defended during the presentation.
In all the three painting series created in her student years, despite their photographic origin and thematic determination, the author devoted time and effort to developing her artistic skill of articulation, often experimenting with technologies and mixing techniques. In 2012, she began her doctoral course at Warsaw’s ASP under the supervision of Prof. Jarosław Modzelewski. Her artistic interests still oscillate around “private sociology” and this time concentrate on the issue of “obligatory rest”. I still sense a touch of deliberate nonchalance in the sphere of physical substance of those new paintings, which seems appropriate to the laid-back nature of the topic.
Paulina Grobelny’s activity after graduation (and it hasn’t even been a year) – including her appearance in the final exhibition of the contest “Hestia’s Artistic Journeys” in Gdańsk, post-contest exhibition of the “Fresh Blood” Painting Review in Wrocław, participation in the 24th Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting in Szczecin, and finally her first solo exhibition “Illuminations and Other Lights”in Gorzów Wielkopolski – allows me to put forward her candidacy for the Geppert Competition in Wrocław. I believe that on the well-beaten paths of Polish critical art of the last decade she has managed to find her own, ironic track.
Kazimierz Cieślik
