We are very pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by Polish artist NATASZA NIEDZIÓŁKA at SCHWARZ CONTEMPORARY.
The exhibition looking for the right gray presents embroideries from two bodies of works by Natasza Niedziółka, born in 1978 in Miedzychód and based in Berlin: a new series that belongs to her so called ‘Zero-works’, as well as smaller embroidered canvases entitled ‘Love Notes’.
The largest work in the exhibition was made in 2017/ 2018 and is a portrait-format embroidery on canvas from the Zero series. In 2016, Niedziółka exhibited a largeformat triptych from the same series at SCHWARZ CONTEMPORARY, where she used not just thread, but also ink, wax, and various pigment drawing pens. For her latest large composition, Niedziółka worked for many months only with cotton thread in various shades of red and pink, used over the entire plane of the canvas. The dominant colour lends the work its title: in specialist shops, this colour is called 1565. Two seemingly moving, horizontal pink colour fields are spread over the canvas measuring almost 2 meters in height. These fields, divided into smaller subfields, appear to be moving and look as if they are being pushed to the right. It could also be a bird’s eye view – just like a photograph taken from an airplane, of properly tended poppy fields, which on a smaller scale, seen individually, attest to order and symmetry – but seen as a whole and in concert, they immediately display obvious irregularities.
For Niedziółka, working on a large surface is contemplative and medidative, and she knows from the outset that only months-long perseverance will lead to a finished work. It is therefore only too understandable that the artist, in order to be able to face the large challenge, works simultaneously on smaller, ‘easier’ canvases, where the end is always at least in sight.
The smaller works from the Zero series, made in 2017 and 2018, seem like sections of a larger context – sometimes it appears as if the artist had used an imaginary zoom to go into the larger works and recreate a part as a kind of close-up.
In Zero 1806, in delicate shades of pink and beige, one is tempted to try and make out the silhouette of a faded portrait; Zero 1682 on the other hand might be a section of a view of clear, turquoise water at a coast.
Niedziółka started working on her series ‘Love Notes’ about four years ago. At that time, words and individual letters were more clearly recognizable on the embroidered canvases. Today, the works have become lighter, more relaxed, and more abstract – the artist is consciously moving away from producing works that can be deciphered in terms of language. Seeing ‘Love Notes’ releases emotions, but we look in vain for any concrete love messages. Niedziółka considers the ‘Love Notes’ to be paintings – just not painted in the conventional sense with brushes and paints, but with needle and thread. This is her way of transferring silence, contemplation, and slowness onto the canvases and into the space.
The opening reception will be on Thursday, 8 February, 2018, from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition will be on show from 9 February to 3 March, 2018.
For further information and images, please contact the gallery anytime at [email protected]