Zachęta Project Room

curator: Magda Kardasz
collaboration: Karolina Bielawska

In My Global Problems, Alicja Łukasiak presents her recent works. The artist spent the last few years travelling – around the Far East mainly, but also throughout rural Poland – and became preoccupied with ecology, reading about climate change and other hazards resulting from the destruction of nature and wasteful exploitation of natural resources. The travels and readings allowed her to acknowledge and appreciate the beauty of exotic scenic spots, but have also inspired rather pessimistic reflections on the dangerous consequences of humankind’s unsustainable socio-economic growth.

Similarly dual, beautiful and horrible at the same time (sumptuously colourful and cruelly fabulous), is the exhibition created by Łukasiak for the Zachęta Project Room. At its core are paintings (distemper on paper and batik on canvas) and ceramic sculptures presented on specially designed plinths. Working on this project meant for the artist a return to traditional, ‘outmoded’ artistic media, a return marked by playfulness and experimentation. Following a period of fascination with new media and disregard for pottery, textiles or ‘small sculptural forms’, more and more young-generation artists have been taking them up again.

The presentation is completed by a video installation created during Łukasiak residency in Hungary: dressed in a futuristic costume, the artist appears here as a ‘lightning diver’. An accompanying travelogue video and slide show present images in which an inquiring viewer will find inspirations for the different works.

Alicja Łukasiak – born 1975 in Radom. Graduated from Artistic Department at the Maria Skłodowska-Curie University in Lublin. From 2003 coorganised with Grzegorz Drozd Zmiana Organizacji Ruchu project.