Justyna Respondek-Muc
Born in 1985, received her diploma in painting with honours at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. Participant in a number of plein airs, artistic workshops and dozens of collective exhibitions.
Justyna Respondek defended her diploma work at Katowice’s ASP with honours in July 2010, after which she was offered a year-long academic apprenticeship in my painting studio. For her, a painting is an open system – a rhizome which keeps sprouting anew thanks to individual reception, polysemantic, depending on the recipients’ emotions, attitudes, imagination and preferences. The theme of her pictures is the human figure, whose form becomes more and more synthetic in the course of time, hidden underneath a layer of white (light). The human, emerging or retreating from the canvas, balances on the boundary between visual truth and the author’s image. The shape of the figure is a pretext for finding new traces, experimenting with form and space. The figures are characterized by internal motion or frozen in instantaneous movement.
The monochromatism of her works is caused by the tendency to simplify representation. The use of varnish, reflecting the space in front of the painting, introduces real light. For her, using the colour white is ritualistic and it signifies “ending” – the final ordering all the elements of the composition. White is a starting point and the finishing line of the picture. It gives an impression of incompleteness, it leaves space, opening the picture to the space around it.
She confronts traditional painting with the digital image, interfering with the “finished” product. The use of animation introduces real motion in the created artefacts, as well as the element of time. The projection has no beginning or end, the traditional and digital images permeate and complement each other. The material picture is, but it also becomes. The introduction of real movement in a painting surprises, but also intrigues the viewer. The illusion is also intended to be triggered off by creating the composition by means of real light or projector light sometimes generated from behind the picture and causing the “stained glass effect”. Light is the source of seeing, it is the basis of photography, and in the case of Justyna Respondek’s actions – it reveals the next layers of the picture, thus allowing us to see for a moment what is normally hidden. In the projection based on the reproduction of a painting, it creates an intangible picture, an after-image complementing the painting level. Introducing seemingly contradictory phenomena within the permanence of the picture refers to the treatment of creation as a process.
The pictures which are not additionally computer-manipulated are arranged in cycles, with a similar effect – it is not the final result in the form of a single work of art, but rather its position in a series that emphasizes the painter’s priorities: creation is a process, and a particular picture’s role is similar to that of an actor in a theatre production.
A characteristic feature of her artistic work is the presence of transgressions, going beyond psychological, technical and interdisciplinary borders. What transpires in her activity is: (1) the aesthetic element, according to which the picture should evoke in the viewer a certain aesthetic experience, (2) the communicative element, as she does not as much communicate with the recipient through her activity as offer the viewer a multitude of interpretations of the picture, allowing him to co-create the composition in his imagination through artistic allusions, (3) the metaphysical element, stimulating the viewer’s emotions, and (4) the therapeutic-compensatory element, based on cleansing emotions, providing momentary escape from reality and intensification of experience. In her work, Justyna Respondek appears to be quite isolated, therefore she remains thoroughly original.
Kazimierz Cieślik
Justyna Respondek-Muc
Born in 1985. In 2010, she received her diploma in painting with honours at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in the Painting Studio of the Arts Department. She has participated in a number of plein airs, artistic workshops and dozens of collective exhibitions.
Selected exhibitions:
- Post-competition exhibition, International Drawing Festival in Zabrze, Municipal Museum in Zabrze (distinction), 2000-2001
- Post-competition exhibition, International Drawing Festival in Zabrze, GCK, Katowice (Grand Prix), 2004
- 17th Biennale of Painting and Drawing of Secondary Art Schools in Bielsko-Biała, BWA Bielsko-Biała (distinction in painting), 2005
- Hestia’s Art Index, Ergo Hestia, Sopot (distinction), 2005
- International Art Workshops, Rynek Gallery, Jarosław, 2008
- All-Polish Painting Plein-Air, Hortar Gallery, Tarnów, 2008
- Figurama, Figurative Drawing Review of Art Students, Katowice, Bratislava, Ostrava, Znojmo, Plzen, Brno, Mainz, Prague, 2008-2009
- Painting exhibition of Prof. K. Cieślik’s students, Municipal Museum in Siemianowice Śląskie, 2009
- Individual exhibition, Two Worlds Gallery, Cracow, 2010
- Student exhibition of the Arts Department of Katowice’s Academy of Fine Arts, Visual Arts Secondary School in Katowice, 2010
- Student exhibition of the Arts Department of Katowice’s Academy of Fine Arts, Arts Institute, University of Silesia Cieszyn Branch, 2010
- Post-diploma exhibition of ASP student works, Art Roundabout, 2010
- 20th Review of Young Art “Promotions 2010”, Art Gallery in Legnica, 2010
- 4th Marian Michalik Competition for Young Painters, Painting Triennale, Art Gallery in Częstochowa, 2010
- The Painting Studio – a Heritage Park, Firing Ground or Art Proper? Jubilee exhibition of Prof. K. Cieślik’s studio, Jan Siuta Gallery, Cracow; Cafe Silesia Gallery, Zabrze; Socato Gallery, Wrocław, 2010-2011
- Drawing Spaces. Katowice-Poznań, Art Roundabout, Katowice, 2011
- 15th Anniversary of the Fine Arts Secondary School in Zabrze, House of Music and Dance, Zabrze, 2012
