KRYSTYNA PIOTROWSKA. STUDIUM

Curator: Dorota Jarecka

Exhibition opening: September, 12, 2022
Exhibition runs until October, 23, 2022

Krystyna Piotrowska’s exhibition presents works that relate to the production and questioning of female identity. The earliest works — on paper and fabric — were created in the 1970s and 80s, while the most recent is the installation Carpet, dating from 2013–16. As the artist reveals, the face and body are social constructs, abstract symbols used to establish an understanding of how a woman should look and behave. Piotrowska’s work involves the reclaiming of these signs for herself, restoring their designation to individual experience and reconstructing subjectivity on her own terms. Krystyna Piotrowska is a feminist artist, and also an organiser of exhibitions. Between 1978–84 (from 1980 together with artist Izabella Gustowska), she ran Galeria ON in Poznań. She co-initiated the first (and so far, only) exhibition of Marcel Duchamp in Poland, held at the ON Gallery in 1980, and at Galeria Studio in Warsaw in 1981. From 2005–12, she curated the cyclical ‘Próżna Street Project’ in Warsaw, dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.

Her current exhibition has developed as part of the STUDIUM programme series, in which we define the identity of a place based on the history and collections of Galeria Studio. The gallery’s collection includes graphic works by Krystyna Piotrowska from the series Portrait Exercises (1979). These were presented, among other works devoted to the connections between subjectivity and its representations, at her solo exhibition at Galeria Studio in 1981.

Photo: Krystyna Piotrowska, “Red and Blue”, 1982, drawing