Maja Kitajewska

"24 Karat"

 

May 20  - July 7, 2017

 

 

Maja Kitajewska’s show "24 KARAT" encompasses eight works from a cycle covering the last two years of her production. Made with her own technique, these pieces originated from the artist's research for material that subverts the traditional forms of painting and, at the same time, aesthetically suits the artist's individual interests. Kitajewska applies mostly gold sequins on canvas. The angle from where they are applied varies, producing particular reflects of light on the surface, while the colourful threads outline the thin contour of the drawing. The pieces are issued from both, the fabric tradition and the painting's visual culture. Their unique character, in terms of texture and flashes over the surface, creates a special aura around the image, similar to the one that emanates around the icon and jewel exhibitions. For their material, the works oscillate between two-dimensional images and spatial objects, while on a representation level, they situated themselves between abstraction and figurative art. Although referring to schematic representations and arrangements of coats of arms, banners, and signs of fictitious affiliations that imitate ancestral, national or other symbolic identities, these are not simply variations on traditional depictions. The appropriation of forms, composition and motifs, as well as their placement in an ironic context deprived them from any deeper meanings connected to wealth, splendour or supposed nobility, are specific to the artist’s work. In regards of the contemporary construction of ephemeral identities and the insatiable desire to emphasize their distinctness, symbolic representations are most often based on superficially imagined totemism substituting real memories. The reference to the coat of arms' figure points to the absence of a stable history in times of acceleration and fluid identities.  On one hand, Kitajewska's tableaux combine the issues of memory, nobility and permanence, and, on the other, they mock the false or hastily constructed identities that are supposed to dissimulate oblivion and the deficiency of a strong affiliation. They are ironically blazing banners of the 21st century, when almost everything traditional and local is mixed with what is temporary and global, creating unexpected and unsettling hybrids endowed with irresistible charm.

 

 

White Flag, tech. mixed, 80 x 80 cm,  2015

 

 

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