Elżbieta Prusinowska

Born in 1985.

Elżbieta Prusinowska uses simple means in painting. She puts her pictures on small-sized canvases or paints existing walls of uninhabited houses with a potential, creating site-specific graffiti. What dominates in her drawings is linearism used for an unhesitating creation of shapes. Here, the line plays a double role – it constitutes the boundary of colour surfaces, and defines detail in a precise way within them. The colour is usually laid in a flat and decorative manner. The dominant composition type is “a figure against the background”, usually a hybrid character originating from nature. It is of a human-animal-plant type, ambiguous and mysterious, synthesized to a simple sign. The figure-signs assume forms resembling single letters or words but are arranged carefully enough to remain in the sphere of ambiguity and polysemy. Her frequent arrangement motif is the combination of letters forming the word E L L A.

The backgrounds used by Elżbieta Prusinowska tend to be monochromatic and abstract. They complement the main representation of the picture, connected with it through fitting divisions or else remain neutral, often black or white. The white of the primed canvas remains active, deftly interlaced with other elements constituting the painting. The absence of the horizon or realistically presented reference points makes the issue of the scale of depicted figures and situations intriguing.

The borders of the format are often left unarranged by the author. In this way, she chooses an open composition, which gives her an opportunity to collate her works into larger sets. It raises the exhibition attractiveness of her painting portfolio. Single works in bigger arrangements influence each other, defining their identity better. Elżbieta Prusinowska’s painting is an interesting, original and personal offer, a message with an intimate character. What may clearly be heard in it is a tone of a whispered confession of a secret. 

Ryszard Woźniak