Excited to have curated a show with @agsze working with @filipagowski on one of my favourite painters Teresa Pągowska opening 13 February in London at @thaddaeusropac London.
In this post you will find a selection of works that explore the shadow in her work. See how her feet’s shadow turn into a mermaid tail? Some of these works will be on view in London.
The shadow is a recurring motif in #Teresa Pagowska’s paintings and works on paper. Pągowska is known for her sensitive and intelligent depictions of the female figure. They often inhabit enclosed spaces or seashores, settings which she renders with abstract fields of colour, as well as with the negative space of the canvas left raw. Pagowska sets scenes where the figure is dynamic and in a process of transformation.
The canvases are also often populated with an enigmatic animal presence, which add to the overall atmosphere of mystery in her paintings. Pągowska states: “I look so that I can see and express it through paint, fascinated, as I am, by the mysteries of art and by the secret logic of each painting.” The semi-abstract quality of each work creates ambivalence and encourages the viewer to participate in constructing the image.
The figures are sometimes just silhouettes emerging from the surface of the canvas. Yet, their presence is often doubled by shadows that traverse the paintings or at times has a different life to the figure. The title of the show shadow self alludes a sense of introspection into a hidden, fantasised part of ourselves which the artist seems to express in her liberated and graceful characters.
The notion of double punctuates her work as well as her conubstancial relationship with painting: “I constantly go wrong, miss my aim, struggle with the canvas, which is both my greatest enemy and my dearest friend. We are alone in that way — the canvas and I.” She further states: « The physicality of painting creates me. Canvas, paints, brushes, well and my hands – these are materials for a painting. So I like to touch, to change into it. I like to be the canvas, the paint, the brush... hence the painting?”
🧜♀️👩🏻🎨🎨🖤
That time I went to visit Olga’s studio to pick the works for #re-enchantment.
The first image is the same painting from 2 different viewpoints. See how it changes.
In her paintings, @olgagrotova incorporates earth and the imprint of plants from the communal gardens of her grandmother and great-grand- mother, who were condemned to forced agricultural labour during the Soviet era, alongside millions of other women. By experimenting with materials, and in light of transgenerational research, she uncovers the history of these invisibilised women. The result of her experimental process is a layered painting with motifs that appear and disappear according to the light, lending a holographic quality to the work. The artist notes, ‘By interweaving my family history with socio-political themes, these works are a proposal for a ‘feminist monument’: unfixed and ephemeral.’
Wearing #wandamihuleac’s and Daligang’s latest series of wearable works where they feminised titles of famous books.
Pictured here wearing Ernestine & Ming Way
#wandamihuleac appreciation post.
Conceptual Artist and Poet Wanda Mihuleac (pictured slide 5) made a series of Tautological poems in the 70s where she writes words with the materials they designate. She makes us reflect on the convention of language. By including the substance of the words she describes, she summons the elements and writes in concert with nature, integrating the materiality of the world.
In the 60s and 70s she made large scale sculptures such as Möbius strips out of moss that she collected from the forrest. She also made experimental films about reflections and doubles, performances and collaborated with French intellectuals such as Derrida, Sixous, Cioran on artist books.
She feels close to the idea of contextual art, defined by the art historian Paul Ardenne as: art that acts at the heart of a concrete universe, ‘in a situation of intervention, of participation’.
She lives in the 20th in Paris and is cool. 🌱📘
I am so excited to show the works of Teresa Pągowska (Warsaw, 1926-2007) at Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin, one of my favourite painters.
I have a rarely seen a painter that treats the female figure in such a felt, experienced and intelligent way.
With her characteristic use of raw canvas, she often inverts the hierarchy between the feature and its surroundings. The figure becomes part of the materiality of the world and the surrounding environment is enhanced. Having spent a lot of time near the sea, in certain paintings the raw canvas references the colour and texture of sand.
Pagowska states ‘each painting portrays an experience and materialises a dream’.
Her liberty, in her hybrids of animals and figures and dancing shadows, seems to perhaps defy an imposed reality and rather express a felt reality, with dream-like permission. The expression of the figure seems to spring from the experience and sensitivity of a living body in this world, and a female self, rather than the objectification of a body or the representation of a figure for its social role.
She often features enigmatic animals as beings that transport us between different realms. The first painting doesn’t feature in the exhibition but I like it so much ! The two following mistresspieces are my fav also and they feature in the show, along with other works that will be a surprise for your eyes, a rare opportunity to see Teresa’s works in Paris. The works span the 1960s to the mid 2000s.
#teresapagowska 🤍
@pagowska_tomaszewski_estate #enigma #interspecies
Excited to announce the opening of #re-enchantment on Saturday 17 February!
Most of the artists will be there.
Come by!
Avec
@arianapapademetropoulos
#teresapagowska
#wandamihuleac
@manuelmathieu@angelikaloderer@olgagrotova@gaweda_kulbokaite@shuyi_cao@bondi_bianca
Image: Tree by #teresapagowska, 1989. Courtesy of the estate and DESA unicum
Teresa Pagowska (1926–2007, Warsaw, Poland) plays with shadows, traces and inversions. She is known for leaving certain parts of the canvas bare, particularly for her figures, as if she was inverting the hierarchy between the figure and its environment. The figure becomes an integral part of the materiality of the world, and the surrounding landscape is enhanced.
A tree emerges in a domestic setting, it is painted with raw canvas, expressing its vital presence and structuring the composition of the painting. In contrast to most art history the figure is the not the main feature. Here it is the tree that takes center stage even if it is translucent.
Les couleurs de gris de #thuvantranart dans #Saturation jusqu’au 24 septembre.
Les peintures éthérées de #thuvantran font références aux agents chimiques dits ‘arc-en-ciel utilisés par l’armée américaine pendant la guerre du Vietnam. En accumulant les couches de blanc, rose, bleu, vert, violet et orange elle arrive au gris.
