Karolina Ptaszkowska

Neighbour in a Red Turban

40 x 30 cm

Karolina Ptaszkowska lives and works in Bristol, UK. She gained her MFA from The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (PL) in 2010 and completed the Turps Art School Course (UK) in 2019. Her practice is rooted in painting, and she experiments with its material limitation, exploring textiles, installation, as well as the written word. Her recent shows include her solo show Spelling with Gallery XX1 (Warsaw, PL), group shows at SVA (Stroud, UK), Paint Talk & AHWNN Gallery (Ostend, BE), Kurt Beers for Topainters Topaintings (online),  Caraboo Projects (Bristol, UK), Art at Alison Richard Building (Cambridge, UK); New Art Projects (London, UK), Kristian Day (London, UK), EBC (Bristol, UK), CGK Carlsberg (Copenhagen, DE).
Karolina Ptaszkowska was awarded a Bricks Bristol Micro Commission and a Residency at The Garage, Bristol (UK) in 2020. In 2019 was longlisted for Beers Annual Open / Summer Marathon 2020 and shortlisted to the ‘Southwest Showcase, Mirror, Plymouth (UK). She was published in Art Licks Magazine, issue 27 and Art Maze Magazine, Issue 7. In 2023 she gave a Visiting Artist Talk at Bath Spa University, Bath (UK), and in 2022 a Visiting Lecture at Bristol School of Art, Bristol (UK).

In my works I generate automated internal subject matter for the paintings and drawings, forming a mutual relationship, and feeding off each other using content and material limitations. Oozines, diffusion, crusty, almost sculptural surfaces, poures, and soft stains lead to the construction of form; but also become a mode of inquiry of what is in the process of being made. The interaction between the language and the pictorial prompts disruptions; allowing for an extension and renewal of formalism in opposition to excesses imposed on the pictorial matter. The source materials are subjected to, much like digestion, various degrees of decomposition and the complexity of their reconfiguration is to be absorbed and used for generative properties.

Multilayered works are diffused with biomorphic forms, shifting into architectural motifs and patterns. These are means for human inward and outward movements. The works explore small momentary transitions as well as massive ones, and they take particular interest in structuring intersubjective sensations between a human and their everyday surroundings.

Asserting the original unity of man-as-the-universe in the dissolution of duality (micro-/macrocosm), I create a body that acts as a structural design that creates spatial support for micro and macro events. It is a host, for the events that play out both: at the extraterrestrial scale i.e. the sun scorching the earth, in pair with the reflecting cycling moon; and micro-occurrences, such as activated patterns in the human body, synapses of the human brain and the network of nerves, echoing morphology of the trees, plants, and flowers.