"POSTAWY" young artist contest

Among many contests for young artists organised in Poland “Postawy” is one of those worth a mention. The contest is held annually and its organizer is the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw. Each year the Academy invites students of its very own Faculty of Painting to participate. The primary goal of the contest is to find promising young artists who despite their age are already mature in their approach to art. The jury selects works created in the Academy’s studios which display such maturity of their authors.

The competition participants do not put forward submissions on their own. Instead, they are nominated by their professors. This means that the participants assume much greater responsibility – they do not only represent themselves, but also a particular studio with its programme and approach. Each nominated participant has to present two pictures, which they choose themselves.

This year marked the sixth edition of the contest. The highlight of this edition was a vernissage of the exhibition featuring works by all participants, which took place on 1 March. This time the jury decided to award 4 prizes. The Grand Prix winner was Urszula Madera, the second prize went to Karolina Pach and the third prize to Paweł Karpiński. The winner of a special award was Anna Myrcha.

The Grand Prix winner will have an opportunity to organize an individual exhibition of her works at mia ART GALLERY in Wroclaw.

This was not the first success for Urszula Madera who was recognized on many occasions and received several awards earlier on. She is the 5th year student at the Academy. Besides school she actively cooperates with a company which carries on stage design projects for opera and theatre productions. She is responsible for painting and sculpture elements of the stage settings. For this edition of the contest she submitted geometric abstraction works from her “Układy XX” (Arrangements XX) series.

This is what she said about the reasons for her choice and about inspirations which led to the creation of these particular works:

“Why did I think about abstraction and why did I opt for geometry? I like learning new things about the order of nature and logic. In high school I followed an extended programme in mathematics and physics because I planned to study at one of the universities of technology and have a professional career in this field.

The works I submitted were born out of my own idea and reflect my quest for harmony and order. They show an attempt at finding my own place in the world which, on one hand is ruled by chaos, but on the other hand is full of optimized and automated manufacturing processes. I am interested in the arrangement of a picture and in the duality of surfaces. My work is about milling and cutting in wood, but at the same time boards and other elements are glued one onto another. In this way low reliefs are created. Such works consist of modules and they need to be looked at from different perspectives.”

Have a look at some pictures from the vernissage to see the works submitted for the contest. Which ones do you like most?