Artist: Joanna Woś
Exhibition title: True to Life
Venue: Wschód, New York, US
Date: December 13, 2023 – February 3, 2024
Photography: Courtesy the artist and Wschód, Warsaw/New York
In True to Life Joanna Woś presents a series of new paintings, furthering her investigations into the history of the medium and its ability to mediate charged emotion.
The paintings are made by applying thin, delicate layers of diluted oil paint onto canvas. Most of what is painted gets wiped out, leaving behind traces in the process. Through false starts, backtracking and digression, an image takes shape. More often Wthan not the result is a gray and dirty monotony, shattered by sudden moments of clarity when sharp light breaks through or a dark cloud gathers in the distance—setting the figures apart.
The motifs are lifted from a range of sources. Renaissance painting, Christian mythology, French Realism, new German cinema and amateur pornography; it’s all in there. But where the motives come from isn’t as interesting as the way they behave when confronted with one another on the picture plane. A myriad of beings cross paths in these paintings. Some play active roles while others stand back in passivity. Here, languid daydreaming, religious ecstasy, and carnal desire intermingle.
The artist is not aiming for a unified whole or a state of equilibrium, but looks for ruptures and pitfalls. This allegedly crude and careless attitude should be seen as the opposite; it is an attempt to stay with doubt and uncertainty, and leave space for the incorrect and impossible.
-Albert Løje
