Magdalena Gryska

It’s Not a Place, It’s a State of Mind

The loss and recovery of unity with the world meld into a single rhythm. Everything is alive, breathing. Observing the complexity of things, you can make them more real. Action and inaction form a pulsating rhythm of change, like the ebb and flow of the tide. The world is a combination of departures and returns, of constant loss of equilibrium and its restoration. If not for these pulsations, the world would be perfect. Without tensions and conflicts, without uncertainty. Time is an endless stream, a flowing river, but also the organizing factor of rises and falls, contradictions and realizations. It is a story about the experience of the great gift that is the short moment to be able to see who we really are. This river heals the soul and and creates a space in the body where we can find shelter. This is an emotional and unrealized aspect of our energy. If you observe it, spend time with it, feel what it is, you will certainly approach a recognition of what it means to be present, aware, here and now.

Cloud, 2020

Four spheres. Physical body, feelings, emotions, and spirit. Each needs a different nourishment to thrive. Breath is where consciousness and life are. Breath is not ours, it is a vital force permeating the universe, and we are part of this breathing. All these spheres exert influence on each other, interpenetrate.

Silent Mind, 2020

A series of paintings based around the concept of wellbeing. Contained in the layers is an attempt to impart to the area of experience a holistic dimension, to make it cohesive. It is an attempt to find an idea to organize the chaotic reality. A silent mind, like breath, is not subject to any processing, it formulates no thoughts. It is like the present moment which we can feel, find, experience. It fills us with light, enlivens us, sometimes with a single word, sentence, poem. Sometimes it is ephemeral like the moment, passing through us like genuine inspiration. Fleeting, quiet, silent, it is like breath, sometimes even closer… It is memory, it is the present moment, it is here and now. It is intuition, anticipation, attentive listening, understanding. The curiosity of something new, unknown, and enigmatic.

Magdalena Gryska

Magdalena Gryska, It’s Not a Place, It’s a State of Mind, 2020, video (loop), edited by Adam Romel, courtesy of the artist

– Magdalena Gryska, Cloud, 2020, video, 7’57’’ (loop), edited by Jędrzej Filuś, audio: Rupert Spira, What Is Music Made Of?, source: YouTube, courtesy of the artist

– Magdalena Gryska, Silent Mind, 2020, four tondi, each 100 cm in diameter, acrylics, oil, panel, canvas, courtesy of the artist

Magdalena Gryska (b. 1965 in Poznań) majored in Painting at the State Graduate School of Fine Arts (today the University of Arts) in Poznań in 1994. Between 1990 and 1991, she was a free auditor at the École nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She works in the Institute of Visual Arts at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zielona Góra, since 2010 as Associate Professor, teaching a graduate course in Painting. In 2003-2008, she ran the Old Winery Gallery in Zielona Góra. Curator of artistic projects and exhibitions by art-school students and graduates. Co-founder of the Kosobudki 3 Creative Activity Place, a venue for artistic activities and development projects. She lives in Zielona Góra and Kosobudki. A painter, she also makes objects and short videos. Author of some forty solo exhibitions and participant in nearly one hundred group shows.

“My work is about regularity, rhythm, and harmony. It is a reflection on the experience of wellbeing, of the forces of nature and the acceptance of its laws. A conscious attention that frees you from haste and from the pursuit of illusions. It is the acceptance of life in the given moment. A focused everydayness and a latent energy of the future. Through painting, I seek order amid the chaos – order in my mind, heart, and body.”

Selected solo exhibitions:

Blue Melancholy, Galeria Wieża Ciśnień, Konin, 2009

Plan B, Galeria BWA, Sandomierz, 2011

Quotations, Galeria BWA, Gorzów Wlkp., 2012

Black Wave, Galeria BWA, Rzeszów, 2014

Mesmeric Paintings, Galeria MBWA, Leszno; Galeria Wieża Ciśnień, Konin, 2017

Focus and Nervous Jigsaws, Galeria ZPAP, Toruń, 2019

Selected group exhibitions:

Festival of Contemporary Polish Painting, Pomeranian Dukes’ Castle, Szczecin, 2010

Triennale of Contemporary Polish Painting, Galéria Umelcov Spiša, Spišská Nová Ves, Slovakia, 2011

Interpretation, Closed System, Open System, Contemporary Art Gallery, Przemyśl, 2015

Gardens, as part of the series Topography of Contemporary Polish Art, Germany, Bad Muskau Castle, Muskauer Park, 2016

The Eagle Has Landed: Apollo 11 – Next Step, Ausstellungszentrum Pyramide, Berlin, 2017

45th Winter Salon, Mazovian Centre for Contemporary Art “Elektrownia,” Radom, 2018

Angel of History, Institute of Contemporary Art Problems of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, Kyiv, 2019
Openness, He Shuifa Art Gallery, Shaoxing, China, 2019

Her works are held in public and private collections at home and abroad, including that of the Lubusz Land Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Zielona Góra.