The artist creates sculpture and video installations, film pieces and objects derivative from both sculpture and painting. She was born in 1971 in Warsaw.

In the years 1993-1998 she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, where she graduated in painting and drawing. She currently lives and works in Warsaw.

 

 

Agnieszka Kalinowska belongs to some of the most fascinating artists of the generation that rose at the beginning of the new millennium. Her space work is consistently eliminating the restraining effect of artistry by using unusual, simple materials such as rope, duct tape, straw, rubber band or streamers. The most recurring themes of her earlier works were situations provoking discomfort and pressure on both physical and psychological levels. The artist would create projects which put the emphasis on the observation of human behaviour in extreme conditions. However, all of her works are deprived from any kind of literality, becoming abstract figures that condense the tension of "the moment right before". Kalinowska’s more recent video works also present threads about danger, doubt or violence, but almost systematically associated with an explicit political or sociological context.

 

Kalinowska treats the materials she uses as timber from which she constructs and assembles forms. The "form" in her work can be sculpture, video or even paintings made of intricately glued straws. Those objects are created via the addition, multiplication and reproduction of elements necessary for the ultimate effect, yet the artist always cares about eliminating the superfluous. The link between all of Kalinowska’s works is most certainly the artist’s tendency to engage into a loose game with imagination when approaching the form, but also her almost obsessive return to a certain category of problems, which clearly mark the emotional leitmotiv of her art. Kalinowska creates pieces on several layers of narration and interpretation, focusing on the lack of safety, doubt, agitation, and resulting growth of anxiety and fear.

 

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