‘I Stand in Front of the Mirror Like a Dog and I Paint’ is a solo exhibition by Maja Krysiak, a Krakow-based artist whose work revolves around figurative and surrealist painting. At the HOS Gallery, the artist will present her latest cycle, ‘Headless Giantesses’, which consists of large, austere canvases filled with figures of the eponymous heroines from the circus and the oneiric imaginarium. These figures become a metaphor for the artist’s liberation from the constraints of reason and a journey towards physicality, sincerity and emotional expression.

The large, austere canvases and drawing techniques forced her to search for an authentic gesture and bodily application of paint. The finished composition was created in one go. The artist allowed herself to be carried away by a therapeutic and meditative process. She dared to trust herself and her intuition without preparing sketches or drafts. This creative method taught her to be present in the here and now and to accept that once a line is drawn or a wrong move is made, it cannot be undone. In the creative process she tried not to think but to go with the flow, leaping across the canvas like a circus tightrope walker. The new technique and materials led her to abandon traditional oil painting. The slow-maturing technique allowed her to clown around, to make corrections, to rethink, to make changes and to hide them under layers of painterly skin. In ‘Headless Giants’, on the other hand, the artist explores attentiveness, honesty and pure emotion. An essential aspect of these works is their scale and installative nature, which compel the viewer to make certain movements – lying down, rubbing or touching. Against the prevailing ocularcentrism, Krysiak turns to the senses, and the bodies of the giantesses become radars of emotional states.

 

curator: Michalina Sablik
coordinator: Katarzyna Piskorz