? 6th – 30th August 2020
? Exhibition opening: 6th August 2020 at 6:00pm
We are pleased to invite you to the exhibition of Agnieszka Nienartowicz’s works. On the oil paintings made with incredible care, the artist presents women tattooed with images of old masters (Michelangelo or Hieronim Bosch among others), including commentary on bliss and awe accompanying religious people.
Agnieszka Nienartowicz’s paintings tell about the ambiguous burden that religion creates in a human being. Christian education constructs a definite system of thinking, which in many cases is present in their lives until the death. The artist asks the question of whether the epiphanic feeling of salvation is not just an illusion that drowns out the fear of damnation instilled in a person. Grace seems almost unobtainable, while posthumous torment always awaits for all of those who defiled by birth-sin ineffectively strive for perfection without following predetermined answers. Education in faith oscillates on the border of pleasure, carried by the vision of salvation, and the terror associated with the subordination of a human being to certain principles and patterns.
As the artist says, “religion impresses on people as stigmas and tattoos that stay with them for the rest of life.” By showing the picture within the picture, the artist indicates that heroines depicted on her paintings carry burdens symbolically depicted as canonical images of divinity tattooed on their bodies. Some of those women are posing as if they were exposing the scars covering their bodies. Hence the conclusion that religion is in possession of mind and body.
Nienartowicz’s paintings are intimate, tranquil and mysterious. Women’s bodies are brought out from the dark background by using an additional source of light. Some characters shyly turn their heads, others proudly throw a glance at the viewer who has a chance to participate in the process of revealing some intimate parts of them. A liberating element, which is present in these paintings, enables the viewer to discover the secret together with depicted women.
The artist in her technique refers to the style of past masters of painting. Watching her works full of rigour towards rendering the smallest details and striving for hyperrealistic perfection, the viewer can have the impression of communing with photographs.
Curator: Stanisław Małecki
Agnieszka Nienartowicz was born in 1991 in Jelenia Góra, Poland. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, wherein 2016 she received a Master of Fine Arts, at the painting studio led by Prof. Maciej Świeszewski with a supplement in drawing under Prof. Maria Targońska. In the years 2011-2013 she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław.