Asareh Akasheh/Anna Myszkowiak The same organic layer.

Asareh Akasheh/Anna Myszkowiak 

The same organic layer.

The exhibition entitled. ‘The same organic layer’ confronts the work of two exceptional artists - Tehran-based Asareh Akasheh and the young Polish sculptor Anna Myszkowiak. Akasheh creates works from handmade paper on which, using ink, she imprints fragments of her body. Myszkowiak constructs her objects from everyday materials such as baking paper, thread, blankets or sheets. Despite her young age, she displays a high degree of artistic maturity, which is evident in her works.

Analysing the works of both artists, we find ideas linking their work. Both reflect on the psychological and aesthetic vision of the body. In the juxtaposition of their works, attention is drawn to structures reminiscent of human skin. These artistically organic shells, despite their phenomenological similarity, metaphorically perform the same functions.

Akasheh explores how the paper ‘tissues’ she has created change over time and undergo internal transformation. In her works, the ‘bodies’ are disintegrated and the dispersed elements function as sites - symbols for the storage of experiences. They refer to aesthetic and political concepts inscribed in Iran's social system. The symbolic paper body is constantly disintegrating into small fragments that will never form a single, coherent whole. The works are accompanied by the concept of ‘repetition without replication’, referring to self-exploration - a journey into the depths of the self and a search for one's own identity.

Myszkowiak refers to the multifaceted nature of touch in her abject compositions. Touch can be both given and received, and each of these activities crosses the boundary that is the human body. The skin is a shell that protects against external influences, but at the same time allows their internal infiltration. Touch as a carrier of sensory experience enables social interaction and shapes the psychic dimension of the skin. The artist refers to her experience of illness - autoimmune dermatitis - which, by her own admission, has shaped her artistic sensibility. In her works, the skin appears as a shell - a mask or curtain in which a sense of self and non-self emerges.

The exhibition ‘The same organic layer’ tells the story of how we perceive and register reality through the skin and its sensory aspects. The works on display, which bear a striking resemblance to human skin, will appear like pages torn out of a diary and containing our innermost memories. The skin is a symbol of identity, a carrier of experiences, a place to store emotions and a space for intimacy. Both artists attach great importance to the matter they work with. They try to understand it and listen to its properties, without overstepping its internal boundaries. Its possibilities and potential constitute the formal axis around which the successive meanings and symbols of the presented works are built. The exhibition at the MOLSKI Gallery will present works by both artists created over the last few years, as well as the most recent compositions specially prepared as part of a joint artistic dialogue.

Opening: 11.04.2025 at 6 p.m.
Exhibition: 12.04. - 30.05.2025
MOLSKI gallery
Aleja Wielkopolska 65A
60 - 603 Poznań