Ewa Kubiak

Statement

My artistic work explores the relation between textual and visual messages. Through creating visual narrations I examine the extends and limits of language and image; write/say what I cannot depict visually and depict what I cannot describe with words. My work is also about storytelling. Through a strategy of experimentation and working with varied techniques I’m mostly inspired by simple, ordinary views and occurences which I approach in a very analytical way and thus deform what was the starting point. Detail is very important to me. The subject I’m recently interested in and which I incorporate in my artistic practice is the power of illusion and the role of scenography in creating a fantasy. Although my PhD dissertation, which I’m currently working on, oscillates around deconstructing the fantasy created by scenography in the movies, I don’t necessarily equal scenography only with film settings, but with everything that can be considered a setting. Even a painting can be in fact a background to whatever is happening in front of it. I’ve always been interested in places and spaces that try to tell me a story and all I have to do is complete the plot.

GlogauAIR Project

During my residency I would like to work on the subject concerning the social space which in this case would be the Berlin’s Ubahn network. To me the U-bahn is the most urban symbol of the city, it’s its veins and pulse. I’m interested in the history of each station’s design and how they evolved and changed throughout the history and during the war. I like how all the station names are written in different fonts, how the tiles are in different colors, sometimes resembling a hospital, sometimes a bathroom etc. In my work I’d like to capture its visual ambiguity and conduct a research about its history (also the visual one and learn about the stations which are closed and out of use). I think that U-bahn provides rich material for story-telling, a matter I’m often working with in my artistic practice. As an outcome of my residency, I would create a cycle of drawings (about 20 probably in different dimensions) and a video, both dealing with the subject described above.

CV Summary

b. 1986, Poland

Education

• 2013 Assistant at Dominik Lejman’s Painting Studio at the University of Arts in Poznan PhD student at the Faculty of Multimedia Communication, University of Arts, Poznan
• MA Fineart, Painting, University of Arts in Poznan, 2008-12
• MA Fineart, Artistic Education, Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, 2005-10

Solo exhibitions

• 2014 Polnische Wirtschaft (with Piotr Macha), Centrum Kultury Zamek, Poznan
• Needed, Arsenal Gallery, Poznan (with Daria Malicka)
• 2013 Utopia Inc., Silownia Gallery, Poznan
• 2011 Salted Candy, Nowa Gallery, Poznan, (collaboration with Piotr Macha)
• 2010 Blindness, 2B Gallery, Poznan
• 2009 Quand les hiens ont peur, ils mordent, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Lyon

Group exhibitions (selected)

• 2016 Everything Might Come, but Doesn’t Have to Go, Up Gallery, Berlin
• Who Mentions Art, Buys a Round, Nowe miejsce, Warsaw
• 2015 The Kiosk, Angaryds Kiosken, Tranas, Sweden
• Begegnung der Bilder, ASP, Gdansk
• Maczużnik, Galeria Szara Kamienica, Krakow
• Anthropology of Geometry – CSW Znaki Czasu, Torun
• 2014 Job in Progress, UP Gallery, Berlin
• Minimalism as a Crime Scene – CK Zamek, Poznan
• LoveAidsRiotSex, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
• 2013 Mom, I Really Need to Focus on My Art Right Now, Arsenal Gallery, Poznan
• Impossibility vs. Self-censorship, Center for Contemporary Creation Matadero Madrid
• 2012 AAAkupunktura, Kordegarda Gallery, Warsaw
• North East South West, Synagogue, Poznan
• 2011 Survival 9, Art Review, Wroclaw
• Walter Koschatzky Kunstpreis, MUMOK, Vienna
• Border, public space intervention, Miroslaw Balka’s studio
• Interior, Fundacja Zielona Marchewka, Warsaw
• 2010 Lazy Life, Importunate Hope, Bochenska Gallery, Warsaw
• Tarzan, Stary Browar, Poznań
• 2009 EndProjekt3, End, Poznań, endprojekt.blox.pl

Scholarships and grants

• 2016 CEC Artslink fellow, New York
• 2014 Marshal’s Office of the Wielkopolska Region Art Scholarship
• 2012 The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Scholarship Scholarship of the President of the University of Arts in Poznan
• 2011 City of Poznan Young Artist Award
• 2008-09 Erasmus Scholarship, Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France

Residencies

• 2016 Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA (the CEC Artslink fellowship)
• 2015 Kultivera, Tranas, Sweden
• 2013 ‘Laboratory’, ‘Zamek’ Culture Centre, Poznan, Poland

Gallery