The residency that inaugurates the functioning of Six Six P has a nation-wide dimension. Ciepielewska has just received the Katarzyna Kobro Award for 2019. This is an important distinction, because it is awarded to artists by other artists for their contribution to creative intellectual exchange and for their progressive and exploratory stance.
The most recent laureate of the award has for years been committed to responsible, balanced and empathetic relations between human and non-human actors. Such position has for decades functioned on the margins of critics’ understanding, sometimes going completely against the recognised trends in art experimentation. Ciepielewska has consistently developed her performative practices and painting themes since the 1980s, often in opposition to Western rationality, deriving inspiration from shamanism, animism and elements of Eastern spirituality. Today, in the context of a natural catastrophe that threatens the planet, these threads have suddenly shifted to the very centre of the most important debates of the present day. At a time of re-evaluating our attitude to nature and gender, when the boundaries between the animate and the non-animate are increasingly blurred, Ciepielewska’s fascination with knowledge driven beyond the boundaries of white man’s civilization, the world of witches, shamans, victims of violence and those previously dismissed as mad, can be reinterpreted anew.
The return of legendary painter Ewa Ciepielewska to the place of her education after many years of exile in Krakow. Many, many years after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, having just received the prestigious Katarzyna Kobro Award, Ewa Ciepielewska has decided to accept the invitation of a group of friends from her alma mater and bring a few paintings to the newly created studio. These brand new works have been inspired by her most favourite activity, which is sailing a historic boat on the Vistula river. For the needs of the documentary film that is being made during her residency, the featured selection has been enriched with several older works that illustrate the evolution of her artistic practice and her wide range of interests.
The selection is complemented by nine watercolours, painted annually by the artist for a Chinese calendar. The calendar is produced in a limited number of copies and distributed only to selected people. It is filled with images of animals corresponding to a given year, from almost realistic representations right down to the most bizarre psychedelics.
This is just one of many ways in which Ewa builds interpersonal relationships. Another, undoubtedly very important activity takes the form of open-air painting workshops, which the artist organises on the river with amazing regularity. It is thanks to them that we can see the oil landscapes at the exhibition. They are among the newest, most reflective works from the entire set. It seems that what sets them apart from the earlier works, more aggressive in form and colour, is a sense of reconciliation with the world, acceptance of the order of things and joy found in simple pleasures. Of course, this does not mean that Ewa has lost her rebelliousness and allergy to every form of evil in the world. However, she is now able to balance this approach with a vibrating sunset over the Queen of Polish Rivers.
Those who are familiar with Ewa’s earlier works know that she has never avoided thorny issues, although she would typically depict them with surprisingly cheerful colours. This contrast, or the ability to balance on the border between the style of old film commercials and a funfair, has always made her painting expressive and instantly recognisable. It is also extremely brave. Very few painters with formal education would consciously and daringly take on a subject such as a landscape flooded with the rays of the setting sun. Ewa does it, and she does it with stunning success.
Text by Paweł Jarodzki
On the wall of the staircase no. 66, a mural by Ciepielewska was created, referring to the animistic themes and formal motifs characteristic of the artist’s watercolors.