Potencja/ Potency 4.03-25.03.2017, Raster Gallery, Warsaw

Hel­lish Road, Ear­th­worms, The Night­mare, Stran­gling, Snake & Tit—we are showing these and other works pain­ted in recent months, weeks and days in an exhibition of three young artists wor­king in the Kraków district of Zabłocie. The “potency” from the title is the name of the small gal­lery they foun­ded together and have operated for the last couple of years, but also an expres­sion of a ravenous appetite: for unfeigned emotions, for pain­ting every day and grab­bing pic­tures by the throat.

They are linked by the place they studied—the Faculty of Pain­ting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków—and by the city where they set­tled after finishing their studies. But what links them first and foremost is a zeal for exploring various pain­terly means of inter­preting reality and their belief that its tor­turous dark side is decidedly more intriguing.

The pain­tings of Karolina Jabłońska (born 1991, graduated 2015) allude to the creative freedom of Art Brut, Neo-​Expressionism and the con­fes­sional art of feminists and female moder­nists. Intense pink and its fleshy hue bring out the dark eroticism of the works, aboun­ding in scenes of heigh­tened sen­sitivity, ecstatic violence and distur­bing hal­lucinations. A lyrical sub­ject here, appearing in many of the pain­tings, is a con­tem­porary young girl with huge brown eyes. Their over-sizing—whether it hides terror or excess curiosity—assumes an almost obses­sive charac­ter. The sweet sul­triness of Karolina’s pain­ting draws energy from the literary threads she traces and from the immediate reac­tion to an over-​controlled and testosterone-​drenched reality.

source: http://en.rastergallery.com/wystawy/potencja/