Don't Lose Sight of What, Though Sigtless, Causes Its Loss

the series were shown at SiLENT CiTY

The latest exhibition of XY Anka Mierzejewska's works is a story in which the body and various fascinations related to corporeality, its rhythms and forms, where a seductive excess of vitality manifests itself, play a key role. And at the same time, hidden among these images is a mysterious, almost ineffable or visualizable sensation that can only be touched by a metaphor, such as the metaphor of the SiLENT CiTY, which here became the title of the entire exhibition. The enigmatic nature of this sensation is related to a particular homelessness that pertains both our relationship with people and with the world (with cognition of the world), as well as with all the languages of art. We experience their silence within ourselves. Most major artistic struggles take place in these regions, when artists try to force language “to speak.”

Mierzejewska's paintings tempt us, draw us into their space, encourage us to read the stories they contain, propose exciting wanderings through various semantic and emotional territories, and at the same time, at some point, we begin to understand that it is we ourselves who are being questioned by these works, that the temptations are our temptations, that it is out of ourselves that we extract fears, obsessions and narratives. The unique character of her painterly language was revealed early on and resulted from a very uncompromising, authentic, often belligerent attitude (both towards art and the world), and from the artist's specifically loving, greedy attitude towards painting. The symbiosis of these factors makes her paintings (series of paintings), in which various media – from photography and film to drawing and printmaking – are present and painterly processed (reinterpreted), have a distinctly authorial character.

The artist's painterly narratives do not have a linear structure, there are no classical solutions here, in which a story must have a beginning, development, some kind of climax and conclusion. Rather, her series are circular in shape, a visual rondeau in which a motif and a colour or set of colours are played out. The viewer must abandon the safe perspective of a distanced observer (expert, connoisseur or even art lover) and become a participant, must respond to the challenge formulated by the works and, surrounded by the images, as it were, from inside them, must start asking questions, must start a conversation.

In notes related to this exhibition, the artist writes:

“I propose the topic of communication. That verbal and that non-verbal. We can, after all, communicate mentally, without using words. We can feel someone's intentions and vibrations. Despite this, however, we still cannot communicate and the world is filled with aggression. Conflicts take energy. They destroy. In the face of such overwhelming emotions, I feel powerless. When the awareness of the enormity of human suffering is unbearable, I can't concentrate on work, because the mind and body are infected with fear, helplessness. Then I instinctively seek solace in the blues and greens of some body of water. I need to drown this tension. To forget.

I want to immerse myself in the water and melt into it, to feel that I am turning into water and into sea foam, that I am connected to this element, that I am fusing with nature and no longer have a separate body. Images settle on the sieve of imagination and memory. I try to materialize them.

I would like to see in people intelligence, wisdom, creative potential. In general, however, we live subject to the mechanisms of pure biology. The drives of carnality, sex, just living. These are the driving forces. The goal is to survive.

When life hurts unbearably, it is better to change form, to survive under a different shape.

In the physical world, I create paintings. The current series of works consists of dozens of paintings. It's an open-ended painting project – because I'm still hesitating, repainting, destroying and overpainting."

XY Anka Mierzejewska invites you to a meeting. To think, to stay silent and to chat together.

Marek Śnieciński

© 2024 XY ANKA MIERZEJEWSKA