Flowers of Valeria | Joanna Trzcińska

Flowers of Valeria | Joanna Trzcińska

Curator: Piotr Mastalerz
Gallery Curators’LAB UAP, 12 Nowowiejskiego Str.
Opening: 21.11.2023, 18:00
Duration of exhibition: 21.11 – 10.12.2023

Joanna Trzcińska

She studied at the Władysław Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. She obtained her diploma in 1994. She is the author of several individual and several dozen collective exhibitions in Poland and abroad. She deals with painting, graphics, graphic objects and teaching. In the years 2018-2021 she ran the Drawing Studio. From Study to Experiment, now being the Head of the Painting Expression Studio at the Institute of Painting and Drawing at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz.

“Flowers of Valeria” – this is the title of one of the presented works – Joanna Trzcińska called her exhibition. It’s not a coincidence. There is a moving story behind it, with emotions, feelings and a sense of responsibility. Waleria is a girl from Ukraine who, in the second week of the war, escaped from Zaporizhia to Poland, taking her 8-year-old son. She lived with Joanna for several months. The author thus became a witness and part of her story. The shared experiences from that period were still looking for an outlet. And they found it, giving the exhibition a narrative. They became the key to the selection and logic of the juxtaposition of works.

In her work, the artist does not limit herself to one technique. However, the exhibition mainly presents woodcut boards (as she still calls them). At first, these were woodcut matrices. Over time, they became objects, bas-reliefs, and paintings. What they all have in common is wood. Carved, hewn, carved with various tools, not necessarily strictly artistic, they became spaces allowing not only visual but also tactile perception. And it doesn’t matter to the author whether it is an object, a painting, a graphic, or a drawing. What matters is the medium that best reflects the emotional charge in the “wooden guts”. A load you can see and even hug. Joanna Trzcińska’s works are cracks on the canvas of everyday life, through which we can see another person.

Text: Piotr Mastalerz