Through organic abstractions, formal experiments, and bold colours, Dominika Augustynek captures the inherent tension of how we connect to others and ourselves. Her latest project, BLUR, invents a visual language for what escapes the eye and mind – all things fleeting and forgotten.
Augustynek, an emerging Polish artist working between painting and interior design, was born in the southeastern town of Hrubieszów and went on to study at the University of Technology and Arts in Applied Sciences in Warsaw, where she received her Interior Design degree in 2022. Today, she bridges professional work in the field with a private artistic practice. Yet Augustynek’s architectural education remains in conversation with her art, yielding thoughtful framings and compositions. There, her background in interior design meets her interest in the inner workings of the human psyche – she sees interpersonal relationships as the focal point of her work.
In BLUR, her works give space and shape to ephemerality, exploring the complicated nature of human memory and relationships. The daring shades and strokes invite different interpretations, speaking to the nuances of cognitive mechanisms like encoding and retrieval. The artist specifically preoccupies herself with all how these processes are influenced by time, emotions, and interpersonal connections – the ever-fascinating interaction between one’s outer and inner world. This sentiment extends to her mindful arrangement of the exhibition space beyond the painting. Augustynek is equally interested in the inside and outside spheres – the public as well as the private – rendering her project a zone for tensions and transience. BLUR is where the smudged in-betweens of our lives gain more sharpness.
Blurred lines, blurred lives
The eponymous blurs permeate Augustynek’s canvases, serving as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of human memory. Paint dims and drips to form hazy splotches as well as floods of colour, hinting at both the complexity and the beauty of the mechanisms of the human psyche. Filtered through time and emotion, memories lose shape and focus – but, as the artist highlights, they still hold their impact and endlessly evocative potential. In her project, she illuminates the importance of all these passing moments. They remain potent, even as the distance between the present moment and the memory grows bigger and bigger, even as the recollection is less and less focused.
Drawing from theorists like Jacques Derrida, Augustynek embraces the inherently fragmentary nature of memory. The artist pays attention not only to what remains in one’s mind, but also to what escapes it – on her canvases, blurs are just as important as clear forms. The paintings thus figure somewhere in between reality and illusion, hinting at the existence of the invisible.
They, however, not only provide their viewers with a visual of what might slip away as they blink, but also of what slips away in discussions of memory mechanisms. Augustynek’s paintings strive to highlight all the ways in which our relationships – from friendships, through complicated familial bonds, to the difficult dialogue with the self – leave a lasting imprint in our minds. What emerges is an exploration of the complex interplay between inside and outside influences in the process of encoding (and blurring) of memories.
Between subjectivity and universality
Augustynek shares stories related to her close ones, letting her audience into her emotional space. The artist adopts an autobiographical approach, embarking on an introspective journey through the moments of emotional intensity from her past. Each painting figures as a visual translation of the artist’s state of mind. BLUR thus emerges as a visual diary – and, as an account of the artist’s life, it remains in progress. Drawing from contemporary art theory of Gilles Deleuze, Augustynek sees the process – the act and art of “becoming” – as the pillar of her creative practice. Her paintings remain purposefully “unfinished”, figuring as perpetual works-in-progress. Just like singular diary entries, they constitute fragments of a greater assemblage of experiences – one wherein every piece marks a step towards emotional and artistic transformation.
The viewer stands as an active participant in Augustynek’s memory mosaic. Her stories are far from straightforward, inviting the viewers to form their own interpretations – and to reflect on their respective lives. BLUR then emerges as a space of dialogue between the artist and the audience, marrying highly subjective experiences with universal truths of human nature. Every mind, after all, holds memories that have been restrained, fragmented, or otherwise tainted by age and affect. In this way, at the exhibition’s core lies not only the tension between seen and unseen, but also one between private and public. BLUR strikes as both deeply intimate and deeply universal. Visual translations of the artists’ individual life stories serve as an entryway into a broader exploration of the inner workings of the human psyche.
An enduring ephemerality
Augustynek’s architectural education informs her painting practice. BLUR marries the creative impulses between the artist’s two fields of expertise. She takes on an interdisciplinary approach, blurring the boundaries between the paintings and the interiors they occupy. Her artworks work together with furniture pieces, textiles, and plants to build the emotional arch of the exhibition. The floral arrangements bring to mind vanitas still lives, complementing the paintings’ interest in the transient nature of human life. Their pinkish hues, meanwhile, mirror the colours on surrounding canvases.
Augustynek’s exploration of the dynamics behind human memory and relationships thus lives both on and off the wall. In her bridging of painting and interior design, she proves that the arrangement of the exhibition space can be just as important as the artworks inside it. What unfolds is a multi-textured, immersive exploration of the fragile, ephemeral nature of emotions, memories, and interpersonal relationships.
Dominika Augustynek’s BLUR embodies the conflicting forces and qualities behind human memory mechanisms. The artist embraces incompletion, treating blurring not only as her subject but also as her creative method. Her emphasis on transience and fragmentation then goes beyond the thematic plane, encompassing the visuals and structure alike. Her intermingling of bold shapes and colours with enigmatic drips and splotches creates a space suspended between the remembered and the forgotten. All the while, this liminal exploration of memory remains open to the viewers’ own interpretations.
Her work figures at the junction of individuality and commonality; in yet another marriage of contrasts, her diaristic sensibility mixes with an inquiry into deeply universal subjects. Augustynek lets the audience into her personal universe, simultaneously inviting them to reflect on their own inner worlds. Her paintings resist closure, instead embracing ideas of process and collaboration. The artist shows that a singular, personal recollection can never be fully separated from the outside influences. She charts the muddled territories of recollection, acknowledging that what slips away can hold just as much weight as what remains. BLUR visualises how memory filters, distorts, and – paradoxically so – persists. It is an ephemerality that endures; a vision for the otherwise unseen.
BLUR premiered in March 2025 at Pawilon Bliska 12 in Warsaw. Soon, Augustynek’s work will be featured at the Art Białystok art fair (October 10-12, 2025).
