Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy „Internal State”
Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy „Internal State”
Small Gallery
April 21 – May 19
Katarzyna Kujawska – Murphy is a lecturer at the drawing studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan; she graduated from this school in 1997, getting a diploma with honorary mention in the area of painting and video arts. She studied also at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.
She is a laureate of the Minister of Culture and Arts Award at the Promotions ‘97 all-Poland Painting Review in Legnica, and of the Town Gallery award at the same event in Legnica.
She publishes her thoughts in art magazines, including “New York Arts”.
The artist cultivates installation and video arts as well as drawing and painting; first of all, however, her areas of interest include space and time. In her creation she investigates the psychological aspects of seeing and perception; the media she uses are always subordinated to these issues.
She has been a curator of many exhibitions in Poland and Japan. She created an initiating exhibition for Japanese Artistic Group A-21 in 2003 at the Arsenal Gallery in Poznan and at the Program Gallery in Warsaw. Since then the A-21 Group has visited Poznan on regular basis. She also worked out an artistic exchange between the artistic milieu of Poznan and the Artistic Organisation A-21 in Osaka Japan. Since 2003 she organizes steady exhibitions of Polish artists at the International Art Festival in Osaka (so far 4 times). She is a curator of Anglo-Polish undertakings in Poznan (the mini-festival Frankly/Szczerze, 2005), and also Re: Generation, an International Art Exhibition in forgotten quarters of Poznan: Artistic Quarter of Śródka (producer: Agata Drogowska – InterCity), 2nd edition of revitalisation through art at Śródka in 2007. She presents her works in Poland and abroad, mainly in England (London) and Japan (Osaka), as well as in South Korea (Pussan) and Germany (Berlin, Hannover, BAUHAUS-Dessau, and Wiesbaden).
In my works I speak about the ‘transformation’ and ‘poeticisation’ of space which I treat as an independent imaginary area. The limitations appear in my works as a line which I treat both as infinite and sectional. This line is the symbol of horizon, the apparent meeting of the sky and the earth, but also the symbol of the reach of thinking, the range of possibilities and knowledge. For me it’s important to experience the collaboration with a place and the consistency of meanings that change the spatial context. Especially I am interested in psychological aspects of seeing, noticing and perception to which I subordinate various media of expression.
The Internal State is an exhibition which tells about emotions liberated in man by travel, waiting, other people, and first of all the time which is emotion-dependent. In terms of spontaneous perception space has various models for man, according to which he is knowledgeable; this includes relations inside – outside, far – near, or together – separately. Analysing the psychology of perception, we can see the processes of elementary organization based on the determination of centres, trends and ways.
The map of the world, which I found recently, made in 1612 by Ottavio Pisani, an Italian astronomer, inspired me to consider human thoughts resulting from the constant human pressure of cognition. The progress in science, geometry, mathematics influences the understanding and sensing the man in the world.
Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy