Sophie Thun and Joanna Woś at Gdańska Galeria Miejska

What do you do in bed? is the first institutional presentation in Poland of the works of Sophie Thun and Joanna Woś, two Polish artists living in Vienna. They both share a reflective approach to the artistic medium – Woś in her paintings and Thun in photography – as they focus on the processes of painting and photographing, or quote from the history of art and photography. They are also interested in the image of the female body, which they capture through self-portraiture. They works are multi-layered, with collage structures evoking various time perspectives, spaces and bodies to speak of sexuality, violence and power relations.

The exhibition curated by Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew at the Gdańsk City Gallery, Piwna 27/29, will focus on lying down, a motif present in the history of art as well as in the works of both artists. For them, the titular bed is an area of ambivalence – a place of rest, regeneration and pleasure, but also suffering and infirmity. A place where we pursue the need for intimacy, but also escape, disappear, and temporarily switch off from life. They say that sleep is a little death. In this context, the answer to the initial question is no longer obvious.