Nie patrz

"Don't Look"

Kamila Gruszecka undertakes a difficult task because it is challenging to narrate something one wants to show, express, and at the same time conceal. This ambiguity is visible not only through the linear motifs surrounding the female figures but also through their poses revealing much yet still concealing the face, as if despite their self-assurance, they were asking not to be looked at.

Repetitiveness in the form of ornamental motifs is an inherent artistic technique emphasizing Gruszecka's style. "Ornamental, geometric backgrounds, in some works, vibrate, directly affect the sense of sight, in other paintings, it serves as 'camouflage' for the woman. It diverts the viewer's attention from her naked body." (Kamila Gruszecka). She uses more or less complicated motifs "thrown" onto the canvas, thus expressing, in a simultaneously aesthetically perfect manner, the ideology hidden in her paintings. The reference to visualism is used here only at an aesthetic level, as beneath the layer of typical abstraction, we find a realistic one, and both serve not the typical perceptual experience of op-art but the intellectual experience based on the contradictions of the visual forms used.

Gruszecka mainly focuses on issues of identity, morality, and masks. "I paint them as I see them. They are natural, sensual, delicate. Their behavior in the paintings is ambiguous. On the one hand, they emanate their sexuality, on the other hand, they hide from the world around them. (...) The figures from the paintings hide their faces, as if what could be read from them were more shameful than naked bodies. The mask constitutes an external shell. It is only a pretense of morality, strength, and peace. It expresses internal torn. The desire to show one's 'true' self intertwines with the fear of revealing 'too much'." (Kamila Gruszecka). The dialectic contained in Gruszecka's paintings consists of contradictions in the form of "discovery" and "covering up" of what wants to be shown and, on the other hand, hidden. What we once considered intimate is no longer so. It is hard not to find connotations here with the internet - our mask where we can be whoever we want, show what we want, behind the monitor screen, like women depicted in Gruszecka's paintings with striped ornaments, which aesthetically adorn, but ideologically conceal, or rather cover something exposed. Paradoxically, in bold, often ambiguous poses, yet still hiding the face as the last bastion of privacy that does not want to be shown - as if it were a reflection of the true self. Virtual identity is exposed more than in real life, emphasized by superficial human interaction, yet it still retains elements of hiding what we consider most intimate. Therefore, intimacy no longer refers to the body but moves into the sphere of human identity. At the exhibition, viewers will have the opportunity to take photographs of themselves covered with ornaments in the manner in which Gruszecka covers women in her paintings. This will create an opportunity to feel like a "living picture" for a moment, to attempt to recreate the painter's creative process, and thus to get closer to and understand her art better, and above all, to reflect on the issues raised by Gruszecka. After taking the photos, they will be posted on the gallery's profile, and the creators will be able to link them to their real Facebook profile. "Having an identity for a person is the most jealously guarded possession. It is a vision of one's own self. It determines our relationship to ourselves and to other people. A person wants other people to recognize them. (...) 'Identity indicates a special type of relationship, on the one hand with ourselves, our morality, and on the other hand - a relationship with others'" (Kamila Gruszecka).

Similar to the ornaments used by Gruszecka, the visual setting of the exhibition refers to her paintings not only at a formal level but above all creates an atmosphere allowing to extract more depth from the meanings of the artist's paintings. This is done through internally interconnected levels of evocation in the form of paintings linked through (mainly) light with the interior. Although Gruszecka's paintings themselves already communicate with the viewer in a very assertive manner, the space does not try to "tame" them and confine them within ideologically defined frames. Through light, projectors, there is an intensification of the reception of works in contrast to typical contextual representation and the integrity of the space with the art presented in it. Encountering Gruszecka's art through a specific combination of imagery in the gallery space is intended not to confine the exploration of art within rigid curatorial frameworks but to stimulate a range of issues and emotions in a way that allows participation in the exhibition and its reception to be an individual entry into the reality created by the artist.

Mateusz Kudzia