Edyta Kowalewska

ERROR,-technika-własna,-150-x-160-cm,-2019-rok

Edyta Kowalewska is an active artist who has already been awarded several prizes. Her characteristic language of painting originates in the prose of everyday life and commonly used textiles like tablecloths or embroidered doilies. Pictures stitched from patches of materials associated with homeliness assume disturbing, non-utilitarian forms, becoming unhandy. The personal story about a family table (or rather about its absence) turns into an equally personal struggle with matter, an attempt to reorder reality. The painting objects bear clear hallmarks of their evolution, they are elegant and brutally raw at the same time. Kowalewska does not aestheticize. As she says herself, she struggles with excess material, discord and ultimately – maladjustment.

Occasionally the canvas leaves the stretcher in order to snuggle down with another piece of fabric on a different, larger loom. Sometimes spools of cotton curl helplessly within a frame that is too small for them. Touched with the artist’s sanctifying gesture, the canvas momentarily enters the sphere of everyday profanum: the washing machine, ironing board, seamstress’ needle, only to return to the realm of sacrum after a while, forever stigmatized with the mark of ordinary life. The trace of the paintbrush, sometimes noticeable, sometimes almost absent, gives way to a wide range of unobvious painting techniques. Seams, stitches, patches, normally kept shamefully hidden from view, come to the front here. We are dealing with the kind of painting which does not require excessive description. The narration of the picture-object and painterly metalanguage interweave with a story about the world, matter, dailiness. This patchwork, stitched up from elements of personal experiences, ontology of painting and exceptional sensitivity, profoundly experienced, honest and expressed in an individual, unobvious language, forms an immensely interesting and coherent story.

Marcin Zawicki

www.edytakowalewska.pl

Education

• 2016 Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku, Wydział Malarstwa

Individual Exhibitions

• 2019 Jak poradzić sobie z nadmiarem? WL4 Mleczny Piotr, Gdańsk
• 2019 RELACJE / Edyta Kowalewska, Monika Mysiak, Weronika Teplicka, Galeria NANAZENIT, Warszawa
• 2018 Dwadzieścia siedem metrów kwadratowych, Galeria Pod Arkadami, Łomża
• 2018 Zdarzenie, Galeria Żak, Gdańsk
• 2017 Obrysy, Kolonia Artystów, Gdańsk
• 2016 Nude/ Edyta Kowalewska, Martyna Pająk, Galeria Sztuki Socato, Wrocław

Collective Exhibitions

• 2019 Polska Gościnność, Muzeum Współczesne Wrocław
• 2019 Trisity ###3, Trójmiejski Festiwal Sitodruku – tuBaza, Gdynia
• 2019 Polska grafika artystyczna/ ASP Gdańsk, ASP Kraków, CAFA Art Museum, Pekin, Chiny
• 2019 Grass na Kolonii / Noc Wrzeszcza 2019, Kolonia Artystów, Gdańsk
• 2019 Wystawa Katedry Grafiki Artystycznej ASP Gdańsk, Galeria Zakładu Grafiki UMK, Toruń
• 2019 Pociąg do Łodzi – wystawa katedry grafiki artystycznej, Galeria Kobro, Łódź
• 2019 Gdańskie Biennale Sztuki, Gdańska Galeria Miejska, Gdańsk
• 2019 Trisity vol. 2 – Trójmiejski festiwal sitodruku – tuBaza, Gdynia oraz galeria Kultura Ma Wiele Twarzy, Gdańsk
• 2019 Bardzo dobrze, Kolonia Dolne Miasto, Gdańsk
• 2018 Co słychać?, Galeria Kultura Ma Wiele Twarzy, Gdańsk
• 2018 Wpis ukończony, Zbrojownia Sztuki, Gdańsk
• 2017 10 lat wydziału Grafiki, Zbrojownia Sztuki, Gdańsk
• 2017 Bardzo młode malarstwo, Gdańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuki, Gdańsk
• 2016 Młode malarstwo w Gdansku, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku
• 2016 “22 – 58: Dyjewska, Kowalewska, Pela, Nadolle, Strojna”, Sfinks 700, Sopot
• 2016 Ogólnopolski Przegląd Malarstwa Młodych “Promocje”, Legnica
• 2016 Wystawa pokonkursowa “Świeża Krew”, Galeria Socato, Wrocław