Sometimes only two lines and a dash of colour, to convey the character of the person lying on a pillow. Then another instance – a little more detail: closed eyelids, hand, arms …
Sleeping people.
In her recent cycle, ‘Sleepiness’, Gosia Turzeniecka shows sleeping as an intimate ritual, mothers hugging their children, siblings, families, friends, embracing lovers,… wrapped in blankets, zipped up in sleeping bags they experience closeness, security, but also – a specific distance, a co-absence. They are asleep.
Sleeping – a state rather uninteresting from an artistic point of view. For Gosia Turzeniecka it is an impulse depicting community, proximity, a connection, the specific aura surrounding those sleeping. Therefore, in the case of her recent work, she prefers to talk about ‘sleepiness’, not ‘sleep’ or ‘sleeping’.
Gosia Turzeniecka’s art is connected with nature. When painting people and animal silhouettes she unwinds a personal yet universal tale that we are a part of a larger unity, our existence is inscribed in the cycle of life, to the rhythm of nature. Gosia’s point of view, despite its ‘naturalistic’ general character, is intimate, subtle, reflective and devoid of pathos. In her work Gosia Turzeniecka uses two perspectives. She creates small format compositions with single details, fragmentary, as if peeped at. At the same time she creates larger more complex arrangements – mouldings with animal motifs or human silhouettes. Figures in Gosia’s work are close to art signs, letters of an alphabet, they are bordering on ornaments, but they do not lose their individual traits. The work of Gosia Turzeniecka gives the impression of fragments of a larger natural history, likened to a panorama of subjective and intense traces of presence. It is an attempt to achieve a deep insight into nature, an attempt to discover inner order, logic and beauty.
Gosia Turzeniecka paints in aquarelle and ink on stiff aquarelle paper or delicate Japanese or Chinese paper with visible texture. Sometimes she reaches for unconventional techniques – she presses out the silhouettes of people and animals using stamps made from potatoes.
Gosia Turzeniecka’s style is elemental and minimalistic. Distinct and synthetic. It is characterized by frugality and intensiveness of the calligraphic gesture, aloofness in composition and personal poetry, simplicity and elegance.
Gosia Turzeniecka uses only what is necessary to capture the essence of depicted motifs: a line to convey similarity and character and a splash of colour to underline individualism and emotional temperature.
As a result of these traits in Gosia Turzeniecka’s work commentators writing about her work often underline the relation with Japanese aesthetics and philosophical thought. The painter herself does not confirm any direct influence although it is difficult to deny the elegant simplicity of the transposition of nature in her drawings.
Adjacent to Gosia Turzeniecka’s work directly referring to sleepiness, the exhibition in Flying Gallery will also present an installation from her previous work which is stylistically close to her most recent presentation. This way the exhibition will take on a broader yet personal look at the artist’s work.

Magdalena Wichierkiewicz