with an exhibition at the Van Rij Gallery

The opening of Tamara Berdowska’s art exhibition “Rhythm” will take place on 19th of November.

Following in the footsteps of New York’s Lower Manhattan galleries, Tamara Berdowska’s op-art geometric abstractions will be presented in the post-industrial space of an old porcelain painting factory in Ćmielów. Preparations for the exhibition took more than two years. The exhibition will feature dozens of works prepared especially for the event, including the most characteristic artworks from the ‘Insomnia’ series. In the halls of the former porcelain paint shop, art lovers will also be able to see recently popular objects and spatial drawings. These were exhibited last year in Berlin at Van Rij Gallery’s booth during the Art Position Art Fair, to the delight of the Berlin public. The curator of the exhibition, Katarzyna Rij, is also showing older works by Tamara Berdowska from the collection of the Art and Design LT Foundation, which is the host of the event, as well as from private collections from Poland and abroad.

In 2000, Tamara Berdowska received a scholarship from the Jackson Pollock Foundation, thus finding herself among the world’s most prominent names in art. She has repeatedly participated in symposia for artists working in the geometric abstraction style, organised by the theoretician and art historian Bożena Kowalska. Tamara Berdowska’s works are in one of the largest collections of abstract art belonging to the German collector Grauwinkel Siegfried, are part of the Peter C. Ruppert Collection at the Museum im Kulturspeicher in Würzburg, and belong to collections in Poland, abroad and in museums exhibits.

What are Berdowska’s paintings like?

Tamara Berdowska’s work does not describe reality, only indirectly drawing inspiration from the surrounding world. The hypnotising works, in which the artist’s imagination plays the most important role, are her own painterly record of her feelings and thoughts. Berdowska’s geometric abstractions, which are not based on purely mathematical calculations, they are created as intuitive ‘projections of her mind’ captured a moment before falling asleep. They are born on the border between dream and reality. The creative process itself, as the artist emphasises, is a kind of trance, a mantra of rhythmically repeated geometric forms that detaches us from reality.

The blues and greys of Tamara Berdowska’s works are mesmerising. They allow us to take pure pleasure in rhythmically waving planes that deliberately do not strive for perfection. In some colour combinations, the delicacy of the paintings is intertwined with anxiety, and the impression of conceptual “discomfort” makes it impossible to remain indifferent to her artworks. The paintings sink deeply into us, lasting in our memory long after we are not interacting with them anymore.

Tamara Berdowska is an artist from Rzeszow, a graduate of the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts from the studio of Professor Janina Kraupe-Świderska.

The artist had always known that she wanted to devote herself to art. She was invariably supported in this belief by her grandmother. In her most difficult moments, which were the meanderings of her personal and artistic life, she never even for a moment thought of giving up art. Today, privately, her great love besides art is animals. When she is not painting, she devotes her time to them… with small breaks for punk concerts. With her husband, also an artist, who is working in the field of sculpture, she creates a unique home full of love for animals. She talks about her life full of eccentric experiences and excitement with a creator’s passion, who has found a way of life in art.

After years of hard work, Tamara Berdowska has gained recognition internationally, where today her works are among the most desirable among non-figurative artworks. Success has not changed her approach to life. It’s just that the queue of those waiting to buy her works is long and the paintings at auctions are breaking new records.

We would like to invite you to an exhibition of an extraordinary woman, a multi-talented artist.

The exhibition of Tamara Berdowska’s art ”Rhythm” at Van Rij Gallery will be open until 24th of January 2023.

Daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Guided tours at full hours.

Grand opening with the presence of Tamara Berdowska: 19.11.2022, 4 p.m.

(admission free of charge; registration for the opening is required – [email protected])