Review
Ewa Kuryluk. I, White Kangoroo
April 23 – November 27, 2022
Starak Family Foundation, Warsaw
Palazzo Querini – Calle Lunga S. Barnaba, Dorsoduro 2691, Venice
Life-size textiles, or poetry on linen. The lively- and audaciousness of an artist put in cloth.
The exhibition Ewa Kuryluk. I, White Kangaroo by the Starak Family Foundation organised as a collateral event to the 2022 Biennale di Venezia unites seven work groups by the artist which have not been exhibited in recent years. As much as a retrospective, this show is a feast for the senses, intellectual interrogation, artistic investigation, art historical puzzle piece. And an affirmation to play.
The room becomes a party [Trio for the Hidden, 1999-2000]: coloured and translucent fabric is sewn over white linen, paint, and drawing. Little objects as requisites. The atmosphere is strange, subtle, surreal. It feels like a stage-setting, but I am in it. Life-size cello players, a house lady, Hiernoymus-beings. Fabulous, fantastic!
These are incarnated drawings [Chairs, 1980-2005]. A one-sided presence: I can’t approach this person, but she pervades me. Her looks, gestures, positions are fully immediate.
A re-interpretation of the shroud. Bodily, eerie; subtle, strange. The feast becomes a hospital.
The painted self-portraits are surreal scenes in pop art style. The paintings seem to glow from within. But it’s all paint. They are bold, serious, yet utterly experimental. Seen within the history of painting: there were ahead of their times. They remain timeless in ours.
As does the whole œuvre of Ewa Kuryluk. The photo-/autographs show an ageless woman constantly reinventing, staging, and playing with herself. Christianity and carnival, sex and subtleness, masks and masculinity; cellos and cigarettes. White and wittiness.
