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Andżelika Biżek

Andżelika Biżek, is a very young artist whose works are nonetheless ideally in line with the canon of naïve and primitive art. She has been painting since early childhood although, by her own admission, the most fruitful periods of her creative endeavours tend to coincide with those of her intensifying affliction. Andżelika was born to an artistic family, her father is a well-known sculptor. Andżelika Bożek chose painting as the means to express her interests and creative visions.

She generally uses relatively simple techniques. In terms of her painting style, she experiments with individual forms and themes. She typically choses stretched canvas as the basis for her soft, delicate strokes. The artist’s unusual style, suggesting that she does not, or indeed cannot use any of the recognised painting techniques, is somehow appealing in its naivete; she applies delicate, pliable and subtle watercolour directly onto the primed canvas. The effect is a somewhat pale image. But the artist does not stop there proceeding directly to the plastic stage whereby she finishes her works with thick, heavy oil paint which she uses in various ways: whitening it, spraying or sprinkling it onto the canvas, rubbing it on and mixing it in. One of her favourite, recurrent motifs takes the form of dots, spots, smaller and larger circles. Andżelika Biżek’s oil technique could be described as glazed and misty, subtle and mysterious. Her colour patterns are very cautious, deceptively unsophisticated, consistent in all of her works. She uses the entire palette of colours, always bright and vivid, cheerful.

The exhibition was rather aptly titled: “Dreams”.

The themes of her works are varied and sometimes surprising: there are horses, bears, chickens, fish, birds, deer, dogs, often accompanied by a human figure or two profiled human-like shapes. Her dreams seem to be an amalgamation of two worlds: the serious world of adulthood and the somewhat banal world of childlike imagination. Upon closer inspection, we find various elements incorporated into the two human profiles depicted in many of the works, these range from simple geometric shapes, through infantile fairy-tale mushrooms, to e.g. an image of a pensive female bust, painted fairly correctly and divided into two parts, with the lower section additionally adorned with beetroot or radish-like shapes. The frivolity of her dreams takes her to worlds filled with tiny butterflies, snowmen, carrots, lambs and flowers encased within the very fleshy, mature depiction of a woman clad in scanty clothing or wearing nothing whatsoever. More still, the figure seems to be leaning out from behind unsettlingly deformed trees.

Andżelika’s “Dreams” are akin to a child’s drawings that are simultaneously somehow very mature in their simplicity. The perspective of her drawings is usually distorted, sometimes difficult to define at all, the human and animal shapes looming out of some unspecified space. The artist likes to divide the surface of her canvas into smaller, geometric segments, delineating the space occupied by the depicted scenes and events.

Andżelika Biżek’s “Dreams” are an expression of her extremely subjective standpoint that proves very difficult to decipher. What is it that she wants to convey? What is she trying to tell us or share with us? Are they her secret aspirations or a materialisation of her actual dreams? Whatever the case may be, we find that Biżek’s works are rooted both in a certain magical, symbolic realm and in the very real world of her everyday life.

The title of the exhibition itself is very telling and difficult not to associate with the Freudian theory of dreams that sees them as always symbolic and meaningful, according to which the true meaning of dreams can be explained through reference to one’s individual dream book, a description that is to be unwaveringly reliable, despite being fundamentally unverifiable.

Andżelika Biżek’s “Dreams” constitute her own, personal form of psychotherapy which allows her to filter her own subconsciousness and produce an expression of everything that she finds troubling, painful, pleasing and delightful. The multitude of worlds and realities found in Andżelika Biżek’s works is truly astounding. Any interpretation of the same should be left to the viewer. Undoubtedly, for an average person there will be little there that can be described as simple and straightforward, maybe only those perceiving and understanding the world in her tones and colours will be able to fully appreciate her works?

Dreams I

Andżelika Biżek does not title her works. The painting is medium-sized, 70 by 80 cm. It is done in water colour with a final finish applied here and there in oil. The author’s works tend to be illustrations of her dreams. This particular painting depicts two female figures shown in profile, facing one another. The first figure of a young woman with blond hair has been placed on the left hand side of the image, on the opposite side we see a woman with long brown hair, positioned symmetrically. The bottom of the painting is filled with lush, green, evenly trimmed grass reaching almost up to the stomach of a horse standing among it. The top of the painting, just above the horizon, is filled with ribbons of colour: yellow, violet, red, white, pink, and green. The middle of the image is speckled with colourful dots. Both the women and the animal are drawn very simplistically, primitively. The whole painting brings to mind an image painted by a child.

Dreams II

The painting is medium-sized. It is done in water colour with a final finish applied here and there in oil. The image is manifestly fantastic, as if a mixture of dream and reality. On the left hand side, the artist placed a simplified figure of a dog painted entirely in grey, the animal is standing on something similar to a large pumpkin taking up nearly a fourth of the painting’s space. Near the pumpkin, in the central part of the image, we see a naked, headless bust of a woman with her arm raised but severed short. To the right of the woman we find a similar but rotated figure of yet another dog which seems to be standing on its front paws or head. In the top right of the image, two smaller pumpkins seem to be floating in the air. A quarter of the painting in the bottom right part of the composition is taken up by a female head with red hair. The whole image is painted against a bright green background of grass. The overall impression is of a simplified, primitive and naïve drawing done by a child.