Kinga Popiela No horse in the world runs like a hare

What if the impulse to create a work stems from the sheer need to create?
The desire for physical labor and contact with the canvas. The feeling of the brushstroke’s direction within one’s own body. The stickiness of paint. The softness of paper. Discovering the image through the body itself.

What if developing one’s technique is more important than the aesthetic layer? If the essence lies not in what appears on the image, but in why and how it was created—what influenced its existence? Why does it possess its material form composed of a variety of textures, shapes, marks, symbols, and colors?

The search for a problem and the attempt to solve it through painting is a characteristic artistic strategy of Kinga Popiela. The intellectual dimension of her painting is focused, first and foremost, in the very gesture of creation. As she says: “The perspective of the artist-painter significantly stimulates the imagination in the context of the creative process and the unique moment of making a work. The painter, being both the creator and the recipient of her own action, responds vividly to every trace, gesture, or blot of color that appears on the image. She doesn’t need to consciously understand the rules of combining these elements; her body knows how to respond to a new stimulus.” [1]

From this perspective, the painting becomes the consequence of an act that is an end in itself. The artist’s approach to painting as a craft-based act places the manual, hands-on need to create at the forefront. Painting, understood as a physical function, does not revolve around narrative based on subject matter, but instead focuses on why and how the story of its making should be told.

Objects exert a powerful influence on the environment in which they exist, thereby affecting human perception. They possess performative power, becoming a kind of portal into another world. The artist, as a creator, holds the privilege of showing and inviting viewers into parallel realities—realized through the image.

Rarely, when viewing art, do we consider what a painting truly means to the artist. Through her work, Popiela continually seeks answers to that question. Her process is filled with tension and uncertainty. She paints quickly. The painterly gesture emerges from an energy accumulating in her body, which manifests in the form of an image.

The resulting work is never perfect. It is never an exact reflection of what it was intended to be. The beauty of Kinga Popiela’s paintings lies in their imperfection, impulsiveness, and lack of intentionality. In each of her works, she leaves a piece of herself. Through the movement of her body, she animates the artistic matter, allowing it to find its place in the world.

The exhibition’s title, "No Horse in the World Runs Like a Hare," comes from Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red. This abstract, whimsical phrase seems to suggest a show of figurative works, yet opens a broad field for interpreting art that, in its essence, ultimately becomes a deconstruction of representation. At MOLSKI gallery, we present around 20 works by Kinga Popiela from series created over the past five years, including Hylemorphism, Meaninglessness, Crushing Rocks, as well as the latest objects and drawings created especially for the September exhibition at MOLSKI gallery in Poznań.

Exhibition: 7–29.09.2023

MOLSKI gallery
Aleja Wielkopolska 65A
60-603 Poznań