Agata Sulikowska is a discovery. Born in 1982 in Namyslow, Poland. Graduate of the Wladyslaw Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Lodz, Poland. In figurative paintings she shows people in all their, often confusing, states of life and emotions, with joys and sorrows, pride, fear, disappointment and hope. Solemn, posed, coy, distressed, eager, obscene. In relationships with each other and isolated in juxtaposition. It confronts with states of mind in times full of upheavals, confusing circumstances and uncertainty.
Reality, which can never be grasped as a whole anyway, seems to fragment into diverse realities that often cannot be mediated to each other or that shift into each other. Identity is fluid and always to be redefined.
Sulikowska draws from her own observations, stories, novels, old photographs as well as painted masterpieces. She combines history and stories. She condenses free fantasies, dream elements and reflections into sur-realistic compositions. Because there is no such thing as a single reality that can be grasped rationally and described unambiguously.
As an examination of ourselves and the worlds in which we live, she creates sur-realistic scenarios from her perceptions and sensations, traveling through time and space. Cherished explanatory categories become obsolete and imagined certainties erode. We see works with bold brushstrokes, in bright colors, full of tension and challenge.
Agata Sulikowska has so far kept her distance from the art market and the mainstream. Nevertheless, she has been discovered. In September she will be “artist in residence” at the renowned Mark Rothko Art Center, in Daugavpils/Latvia. In Norway she exhibits at the Harstadt and Tromso Art Forums, and in November she is featured at the Warsaw Art Fair. But first she can be seen with her exhibition “Entangled Realities” at AG18.