Saturday,
18 January
Alicja BIELAWSKA, Teresa STARZEC
Exercises in Attention
Curator: Paulina Olszewska
Opening April 25, 2024 at 7 P.M.
Meet the author session: April 25, 2024 at 8 P.M.
“So show him the ordinary things that from generation to generation live in us as our possessions, at hand, in our sight.”
R.M. Rilke
“Exercises in Attention” is a conversation between two artists: Teresa Starzec and Alicja Bielawska. Teresa Starzec (born 1952) is an artist working with the medium of painting and drawing, while Alicja Bielawska (born 1980) uses spatial forms, using fabric and ceramics. The exhibition focuses on the moments in which their practices meet and find issues that both of them have in common.
What we encounter in both Teresa Starzec and Alicja Bielawska is the titular attention, i.e. a way of perceiving the reality around us and transforming it into the language of art. Both artists also refer to nature in different ways and use its elements or motifs related to it. Teresa Starzec treats her paintings as a synthesis of landscapes saturated with air and light, in the surroundings of which the artist creates every day. Teresa Starzec’s works encourage us to look at the reality around us through feelings and impressions.
The starting point for Bielawska’s spatial works are the architectural forms of screens, partitions and curtains, which create new spatial relationships, giving a sense of intimacy and security, and separating the interior while remaining open to the entire room. The artist uses naturally dyed fabrics to create her forms, and some patterns are inspired by the floodplains of the Narew River.
“Attention exercises” is also a conversation between a mother and her daughter, women who share an emotional bond, as well as non-verbal and intuitive understanding. This is visible in the exhibition space, when Teresa Starzec’s paintings are combined with Alicja Bielawska’s installations, and the colors and forms in their works complement each other. Additionally, in the sculpture “Cutouts” (2019), Alicja Bielawska incorporates into the female narrativethe motifs from cutouts that were created by her grandmother, Halina Bielawska.
The exhibition “Exercises in Mindfulness” presents images created by Teresa Starzec over the last few years. Alicja Bielawska uses existing installations and sculptures supplemented with works created especially for the space of the Jan Tarasin Art Gallery in Kalisz. Among them are objects specially designed by the artist, which encourage us to sit on them and stay in the space here and now, to practice our own attention paid to our surroundings.
Paulina Olszewska
Alicja Bielawska born 1980 in Warsaw, where she currently lives.
A graduate of art history at the University of Warsaw and fine arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In 2022, she defended her doctorate under the supervision of prof. Katarzyna Józefowicz at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.
She creates drawings, sculptures and installations using materials such as fabrics and ceramics. She writes poetry. Her works focus on the material sphere of everyday life and the relationship between objects, interiors and memories, touching on the issue of the relativity of perception and the role of memory. She is interested in shaping space and the context in which she places her works – the context of the place, architecture and the role of the recipient. She also introduces elements of choreography and performance into her works.
In 2015, she was nominated for the Views 2015 – Deutsche Bank Award, co-organized by Zachęta National Gallery of Art, and in 2016 for the Polityka’s Passport award in the visual arts category. She completed artistic residencies at Academie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in 2014-2015 and at Nida Art Colony in 2016. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw commissioned her for site-specific works twice, in 2013 and 2018.
She represented Poland at the London Design Biennale 2021 with the exhibition Clothed House. Tuning into seasonal imagination, created in cooperation with CENTRALA and Aleksandra Kędziorek. Clothed House exhibition was subsequently shown in 2022 at the Design Biennale BIO 27 Super Vernaculars in Ljubljana and at the Lisbon Architecture Triennial 2022.
Her works are in the collections of such institutions as: Galeria Studio, Museum of Art in Łódź, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Podlasie Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź.
Teresa Starzec, born born in 1952 in Kraków, lives and works in Warsaw and Podlasie.
In the years 1972-78 she studied at the Faculty of Graphics and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 1975-76 she studied at the Faculty of Graphics of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. She obtained her diploma in 1978 in the woodcut studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 1985/86 she was on scholarship at Atelierhaus Worpswede (Germany). In 1991, together with her husband Andrzej Bielawski, she founded the Atelier Foundation – a non-governmental organization operating in the field of artistic education, which she runs to this day.
She creates oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, woodcuts, videos and photographs. In her work, the landscape is a reference and inspiration. Observing nature and studying a selected motif in the changing light of day and seasons is also associated with contemplation for the artist and has a metaphysical dimension for her. A single element of the landscape processed by the artist becomes an almost abstract form. Color is an important element of her language, using which she develops variations on selected motifs, creating extensive cycles of paintings, drawings and woodcuts.
Her works are in the collections of such institutions as: the National Museum in Krakow, the Drawing Room of the National Library in Warsaw, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Museum of the Archdiocese of Warsaw, the District Museum in Przemyśl, the Worpswede Archive in Worpswede (Germany), the Country Council in Mariestad (Sweden), the British Museum in London (Great Britain) and in private collections.
The Exercises in Attention project is accompanied by an educational programme, the premise of which, like the entire exhibition, is to shape sensitivity to the surrounding reality, other people and the natural world.
A SCHEDULE of the educational and animation programme is available on our website: https://tarasin.pl/program-edukacyjno-animacyjny-towarzyszacy-wystawie-cwiczenia-z-uwaznosci/
Exhibition duration
Apr 25-May 24, 2024
Exhibition location:
Galeria Sztuki im. Jana Tarasina
62-800 Kalisz, pl. św. Józefa 5
“Exercises in Attention” exhibition partner is Hestia Artistic Journey Foundation and STU ERGO Hestia S.A.
Funded by the Hestia Artistic Journey Foundation
