‘Eden of the Soul’ Karolina Szymanowska's exhibition — part of a cycle ‘Inessentials’
The exhibition of Karolina Szymanowska's works inaugurates the project ‘Inessentials’, which is planned for the whole year, involving artists, designers and the local community in a series of meetings, screenings, discussion panels, performances and urban actions. Eminent artists will try to stimulate the need to alter our closest environment, which might in turn lead to a change in our way of thinking about space as a form which affects most of our behaviour. Our guest artists' actions and realisations are supposed to encourage the public to re-design the unwelcoming urban space, converting it into a place where it is possible to settle, create and maintain bonds with others.
‘Inessentials’ — book summary of exhibition cycles The project ‘Inessentials’, which is planned for the whole year, involving artists, designers and the local community in a series of...
Magdalena Starska ‘To calm’ — actions involving city space within the cycle ‘Inessentials’ Magdalena Starska presents the inhabitants of Katowice with her original design of a root cellar to keep cucumbers. The inspiration for her idea came...
share your dream with Justyna Gruszczyk — actions involving city ‘scentification’ within the cycle ‘Inessentials’ Is it possible for a real city to compete with the way it is dreamed about? Could the images from dreamland be more important? I would like to create...
meeting with Wojciech Bąkowski — part of a cycle entitled ‘Inessentials’ On Tuesday, 28th February, at 7pm, BWA's Small Space will host a meeting with Wojciech Bąkowski, part of a cycle entitled ‘Inessentials’. The...
26th April (Thursday), vernissage at 6 p.m.
The exhibition ‘Eden of the Soul’ (Raj duszny) comprises animations based on archival photographs, and jewellery items that resemble instruments of torture. Karolina Szymanowska's works depict different ways in which a body adapts to requirements imposed by culture. Her art transcends clear-cut divisions between the allowed and the forbidden, the painful and the pleasant, referring to the deformations and distortions whose origin can be found in the quest for perfection and the attempt to adapt to the general public at all cost. The artist regales us with a tale about beauty and order, which also contains the unavoidable; aggression, oppression, appropriation and omission of elements that are outside the rules and the canon.
Karolina Szymanowska (born in 1982) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław in 2008, having studied towards her diploma in Grażyna Jaskierska's studio. She works in sculpture, installations and drawings. She has taken part in the following exhibitions: ‘Survival 8 — Young Art Review in Extreme Conditions’ in Wrocław, 2010; ‘Accidental Pleasures’ in BWA Gallery in Katowice, 2009; ‘Rybie Oko’ Biennial of Young Art in Słupsk, 2008; among others.
Curator: Marta Lisok
