PATRYCJA ORZECHOWSKA – Objects in Withdrawal

The exhibition features a collection of puzzling objects that make temporary alliances and have their ‘dark side’.

The exhibition “Objects in Withdrawal” by Patrycja Orzechowska features sculptures, objects and installations created in the last four years. The works reflect the artist’s fascination with the material world and the life of things, as well as her experience of the theatre of objects.
The exhibition is curated by Anna Mituś.

Anna Mituś:
This exhibition is about us insofar as it is about the objects that, to some extent, we as humans have brought to life. Above all, however, it will be about the “dark side” of things. The one that pulls back from any relationship with humans. It is there, even if we weren’t.

The exhibition of works by Patrycja Orzechowska features a collection of puzzling objects containing temporary alliances. Immersing oneself in its sensorium, one can easily recognise some of its parts: hook, rust, soft, hard, earth, clay, skewer, nail, cage, fold, vessel, difference: full/empty. Recognition is based on difference. This is where we start. Using sight, we recognise some arrangements of lines as human facial features (it’s an evolutionary adaptation), two elongated triangles, that’s scissors. But what happens when the calculating legibility of the function given to objects by their creators is obliterated, when they lose their economic sense? Intelligence, whether human or artificial, craves references, comparisons, parallels. It ignores the obscure which, from its perspective, is meaningless. Orzechowska’s objects work on this tension. They hook on to associations and hold on for as long as they can. They attract and in a moment repel. They withdraw from the first emotions and draw the gaze into strange, paradoxical interpretations that defy the dating of the artist’s collected objects. They create new combinations, but none of them are permanent or definitive.
One can see in them a picture of the depression of an anthropocentric, rational world and the growing influence - and unclear competence - of self-learning neural networks. Temporarily joined together, entangled for a moment only by a wire or rubber band, these things can also be understood differently. For their structure has a magical syntax. It draws on the connections between art and the pre-linguistic and pre-rational performativity of action in the world, known from shamanism and other religious rituals. The objects presented in the exhibition tell a non-linear story in which time and space are curved. If we could see the human story of the world as a plane, it would be torn to shreds and crumpled. What we look at, on the other hand, are only snippets of the reality in which we participate. The artist intuitively refers to the still unclear properties of matter and to the first impulses of human action with it, which aim to negotiate the possibility of survival.


Patrycja Orzechowska — visual artist, author of art books; works with photography, collage, ceramics, installation, collecting, applied graphics and ready-mades.
She was born in 1974 in Bydgoszcz; graduated from the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Arts, majoring in graphic design, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Studies at the University of Arts in Poznań; a multiple grant holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Marshal of the Province of Pomerania and the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk. Her works have been presented at several dozen solo and group exhibitions. She is the founder of the JAMI Issue publishing house. In her recent productions she deals mainly with OOO (Object-Oriented Ontology). The artist lives and works in Gdańsk. Pictured: Patrycja Orzechowska. photo: Andrzej Karmasz

More on the artist's website >>


Anna Mituś – Curator, critic and historian of contemporary art. Degree in German Philology and Art History at the University of Wrocław. From 2003 to 2021 she was associated with BWA Wrocław, as a writer, curator of exhibitions; since 2008 editor-in-chief of the magazine 'Biuro'. Since 2017, co-author of the Awangarda gallery programme; since 2019, she has been in charge of the BWA Wrocław Main gallery programme. She works on the relationship between art and other areas of reality. She has published texts on art in Obieg, Umelec Magazine, Odra and Noise, and others. Between 2010 and 2014, she was a member of the Art Council of the Lower Silesian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. In September 2014, her edited book “Aggressive Innocence. The history of the Luxus group”.
Pictured is Anna Mituś, photo by Natalia Kabanow

Daniel Brozek - Wroclaw based sound art curator (Survival Art Review, Canti Spazializzati, Sanatorium of Sound, PLATO Gallery Ostrava), modern music critic (Glissando magazine, Canti Illuminati blog) and sound studies researcher (Soundscape Research Studio at Wroclaw University). In Czarny Latawiec project works as a sound artist, produces music albums, sound installations and soundtracks for theatre plays.

Czarny Latawiec - is working in the fields of sonoristic plunderphonics and sound imperialism. His productions are devoted to the epiphanies of african rhythms’ timelessness and the power of just intonation frequencies.

Galeria Bielska BWA, Bielsko-Biała
Patrycja Orzechowska – Objects in Withdrawal
1 September – 8 October 2023 (lower room)
opening: Friday, 1 September, 5 pm
curator – Anna Mituś
sound design – Czarny Latawiec

See the 10th Curated Exhibition of Bielska Jesień 2018 “Children of the Light”, which included Patrycja Orzechowska  >>
and a catalogue for the exhibition “Children of the Light” designed by Patrycja Orzechowska” >>

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