Martyna Lebryk

Statement

I paint confused, and hesitant figures to explore our existence where seriousness and laughable co-exist. I work mainly in paint, using oil, charcoal and oil pastel on paper. My artworks depict bodily creatures occupying dreamlike spaces. These fanciful scenes explore themes of identity, agency, self-determination and longing.

In my paintings formally, I work with semi-familiar shapes, ludic colour and active lines, which help shape these ambiguous and crooked narratives. These works sit somewhere between a painting and a drawing. There is differentiation in the velocity between fast-sketched charcoal or oil pastel shapes and the slower marks in oil paint. In my process, the act of erasing is as important as determining what to preserve. This crude materiality suggests references to urban aesthetics, where things happen fast, bodies pass in transit, assemble, become visible, and, through that, political.

My work has a certain perversity, humour and fragility to it. The subjects of my artworks appear both comical and tragic — as if the sense of humour is critical to survival in this strange world I have created. Hesitant and restless, they waver between feelings of enthusiasm and despair. This awkward tension explores a sense of confusion, which affects our moral, social and political hopes.

GlogauAIR Project

During the GlogauAIR residency program, I would like to continue working on my ongoing project but also concentrate on the research and developing more sculptural elements. I’m interested in making something that can be seen as light-hearted on first look but then reveal darker feelings of helplessness and dislocation.

CV Summary

Selected Group Exhibitions

• 2022 – Contemporary British Painting Prize, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London, UK – curated by Stacy McCormick
• 2022 – Wells Art Contemporary 2022, Wells, UK – selectors: Matthew Burrows MBE, Dale Lewis, and Nana Shiomi
• 2022 – OEOE – Tinimini Room, Blekersdijk Dordrecht, the Netherlands – curated by Ralf Kokke
• 2022 – you breathe differently down here – Draíocht, Dublin, Ireland – curated by Amanda Coogan
• 2021 – Contemporary British Painting Prize, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield, UK

Gallery