Artists: Dorota Buczkowska i Karolina Grzywnowicz
29.09–22.10.2022
Exhibition opening as part of Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2022: 29.09–2.10.2022
Special events:
30.09.2022, 18.00 (Friday) „Thus Spoke the Plant”, performance by Dorota Buczkowska
1.10.2022, 16.00 (Saturday) „Transmitters of Memory”, performance by Karolina Grzywnowicz
JEDNOSTKA Gallery
Andersa 13, 00-159 Warszawa, PL
www.jednostka.com
Opening hours during WGW:
Thu–Sun 11.00–19.00
Opening hours after WGW:
Tue–Sat 14.00–18.00
The land knows you, even when you are lost.
—Robin Wall Kimmerer
As part of Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2022, JEDNOSTKA Gallery presents GROUNDING, the first joint exhibition by Dorota Buczkowska and Karolina Grzywnowicz. Personal experience. Research. Policymaking. Disparate fields, yet they overlap as a starting point for the reflections of Dorota Buczkowska and Karolina Grzywnowicz on relationship between humans and nature.
Buczkowska’s paintings and drawings are inspired by her personal relations with plants, as well as by the work of Australia-based researcher Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary ecologist who dispenses with anthropocentrism, melding scientific method with traditional knowledge of nature. Gagliano is one of multiple voices speaking today from different perspectives about the importance of restoring subjectivity to nature. Buczkowska’s series „Thus Spoke the Plant”[1] (2022)1 is the result of the artist breaking off contact with the city for two years. Out of a blurred background of green, the essence, a plant, comes to the foreground. Grounding—life guided by diurnal and seasonal cycles, in an ecosystem underpinned by interchange and
respect—is the science that plants taught the artist.
In her premiering installation, Karolina Grzywnowicz combines lines of thought connected to ecology and decolonization, the personal and/as political. The artist studies landscape as a medium that has long been used as a tool of ideology and power; more specifically, for the projection and implementation of imperialist mentality. History is written by the “winners,” who transform the landscape in the process, subjecting it to their aesthetic preferences and, above all, their political agenda. Grzywnowicz explores the horticultural in conflict areas, examining agricultural policies and how territories end up inscribed.
For both artists, sensory experience is crucial. Buczkowska becomes wholly embedded with nature. Grzywnowicz focuses on scents that are the most enduring transmitters of memory and experience. According to recent studies, these not only trigger immediate recall of traumatic memories in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but can be used in therapy as a key means for developing resilience.
Dorota Buczkowska and Karolina Grzywnowicz employ different methods and experiences to reflect on how artistic practices influenced by nature can support broadly understood processes of decolonization, providing both tools for resistance and techniques for healing.
[1] The title of the series comes from Monica Gagliano’s book Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants (North Atlantic Books, 2018).
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DISTILLATES KAROLINA GRZYWNOWICZ
Dorota Buczkowska (b. 1971)
Works across mediums including painting, sculpture, graphic art, photography, and drawing. A graduate of the Faculties of Sculpture and of the Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, in Gender Studies at the University of Warsaw, and the National School of Fine Arts at the Villa Arson in Nice. Recipient of numerous grants and awards, including from: Lorne Sculpture Biennale, Australia (2011), Pro Helvetia CRIC Sierre Center, Switzerland (2011), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2010). She has had numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad. Her works are included in the collections of, among other institutions: Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Raffles Europejski Warsaw Art Collection, ING Polish Art Foundation, PKO Bank Polski Collection, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl, IGNOE – State Gallery of Lower Austria, MoBY – Museums of Bat Yam.
Karolina Grzywnowicz (b. 1984)
Visual artist and author of interdisciplinary projects rooted in academic research. A graduate in Comparative Studies in Literature at Jagiellonian University and the holder of a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In her work she deals with, among other subjects, plants in the context of often violent human political and sociological activity. She approaches the landscape as a living archive in which traces of past events are recorded. She is interested in practices of weak resistance, everyday endeavors, and subtle gestures that have the power to resist oppression. She has had numerous exhibitions
in Poland and abroad.
Partner: Artesola Gallery