Kinds of Love | group show

The exhibition Kinds of Love sums up the first year of Gunia Nowik Gallery’s activity. We present works by all the artists represented by the gallery: those who worked with Gunia Nowik before she founded the gallery under her own name (Agata Bogacka, Teresa Gierzyńska, Jakub Gliński, Katarzyna Korzeniecka), and those who started working with her last year (Anna Orłowska, Iza Tarasewicz). They are accompanied by drawings from the Estate of Krzysztof Jung, which the gallery has taken under its care, and – for the first time – a sculpture by Daniel Rycharski, who joined the circle of GNG artists just a few weeks ago.

The common denominator of the exhibition is love. Ties between a mother and a child, two women or lovers can be found in the works of Teresa Gierzyńska created in the 1970s and 1980s, including the series About Her and The Essence of Things. Jung’s male nudes from the early 1990s, in shades of strong pink, are erotically charged. A photograph from Anna Orłowska’s family archive, which the artist transfers onto fabric and hangs in space on a special curtain rod, depicts the complicated relationship between two brothers. 

Ties and interpersonal relations are often the starting point for Agata Bogacka’s abstract paintings. The artist translates them into relationships and tensions on the surface of the canvas. Painting and life are usually linked by the titles of her paintings – the exhibition includes a diptych from the Relationships series from 2019. Similarly, Iza Tarasewicz depicts in a small relief the pattern of a meeting which results in a flow of energy, an increase of forces. Katarzyna Korzeniecka, on the other hand, inserts a marbled monumental column into the gallery, introducing an element of stability, support into the exhibition (Walhalla, 2022). 

Daniel Rycharski’s 2020 sculpture, which depicts the fall of Jesus carrying the cross is about how systemic homophobia makes LGBTQ+ people accustomed to living in isolation. The nails with which Christ’s figure is covered can symbolize their difficulties in establishing closeness with another person. Jakub Gliński’s painting from the series Removed (2022) tells the story of erasing and forgetting, both in a literal sense, through painting, and in a metaphorical sense, erasing from memory.

From the perspective of the gallery, the Kinds of Love exhibition is suspended between past and future. It echoes the artists’ recent exhibitions (Teresa Gierzyńska at Zachęta, Jakub Gliński at Wrocław City Gallery, a continuation of Anna Orłowska’s Silesian family series shown recently at the GNG), as well as announcements of new exhibitions – this autumn, Katarzyna Korzeniecka and then Daniel Rycharski will present their individual shows at the gallery.