PATRYCJA PIĘTKA – YOU LIE DOWN AND WAIT FOR SLEEP. YOU STAY AWAKE FOR SOME TIME

Stories in painting about the emanation of life forces, the emotionality of nature, about transience and traces in space.

An exhibition of paintings by Patrycja Piętka, who often uses the theme of night and vanitas associated with transience in her work. Her painting series are evocative of a feeling of melancholy and anxiety. She sensitively conveys the emotionality of nature while drawing inspiration from film culture, following the psychology of the characters and the specificity of building tension, symbolism and understatements hidden in the layers of reality.

Patrycja Piętka:
I endlessly play the role of the storyteller and try once again to tell how things really were. I believe that everything that has already happened leaves a trace - a glow of energy, an accumulation of violent gestures, repetitive sequences. A breach is never left in space, a void of presence, a flat vacuum in the air. The fusion of heat and friction does not disappear, it is filled by something else. It is an invisible movement in space that, in looping, still reproduces fragments of life and presence. It lingers on the departing, mould-grown, tattered wallpaper of an abandoned house; on the great-grandmother’s gloves. The carcass of a fox, devoured by brown sand and overgrown by forest fern roots. The essence of my painting is an attempt to capture and materially explore what ancient beliefs or esoteric movements have to say about the soul. I attempt to formally visualise the emanations of life forces that undergo transformation, releasing themselves at a liminal moment. The turquoise iridescent glow, whose presence I include in the pictorial representation, which evokes a magical element, has become for me a kind of licentia poetica.
Curated by Małgorzata Gołębiewska, in cooperation with Katarzyna Mierzwińska


Patrycja Piętka – born in 1998, she spent her childhood at her family home in Bystra near Bielsko-Biała. Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków; honours degree in the studio of Prof. Mirosław Sikorski, her graduation work was entitled “Vargtimmen/the Wolf’s Hour” (2022). Since 2020, she has also studied stage design at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts. She has participated in the exhibitions “PUZZLE” in the programme of the Week of Polish Culture in Zalaegerszeg (Hungary, 2019); “At Arm’s Length” during the Cracow Art Week KRAKERS 2019: SKOK

KRAKERS (2019); “Drawing on Drawing” as part of the exhibition “Black On White”. 200 years of drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, which was organised by the National Museum in Kraków.

The first solo show of the artist’s work was the exhibition “Depth” (Art Agenda Nova, 2021). The artist lives and works in Kraków and is associated with Art Agenda Nova in Kraków.

Patrycja Piętka - You lie down and wait for sleep. You stay awake for some time
Galeria Bielska BWA, Cafe Club Aquarium
2 February – 5 March 2023
opening: Thursday, 2 February 2023, at 7 p.m.

More works by the artist on Instagram >>