Page 12 - Museum

BARBARA PALKA-WINEK

Lives and work in Krakow, Poland
www.palkawinek.art.pl

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
(Jonathan Swift)
The leitmotif of the Barbara Palka-Winek paintings is a woman with
her deep and complex psyche. The artist’s intellectual digressions that
go beyond this subject function on its fringes in the form of painting
issues of philosophical and metaphysical nature.
In the phenomena that the artist examines outside her microcosm –
femininity, we can recognise this basic and universal element on which
the specific sensitivity of a man and a woman can be built.

In many of her works, the artist took up a discourse in which she had
to incorporate “the curiosity of the reason,” i.e. the capability enabling
both men and women to “sail” outside their own bodies. The woman’s
body is her home that she leaves unwillingly and on which she pins her
hopes. Her body will always be the place in which the Mystery begins.
It does not free her from looking at the stars and from several anxieties
that turn into obsessions. These are the portraits presenting a woman
as a mysterious, enigmatic creature, maybe even unknown to herself.
And there is no more theology in it. These are not the portraits of a
divine creature who despite being close does not show her face and we
feel her breath as if she stood behind. These are the portraits of women
staring into the mirror, studying their own physiognomy and depth. The
face is therefore the mirror of the soul for the artist.

Mondrian’s views on art subject to geometric logic and expressed by
an analytical approach to colour constitute one of the main points for
discussion. Barbara Palka-Winek’s painting is diametrically opposed to
this rational art. It is distant from a measured calculation. Rather dynamic,
vivid, exciting and overwhelming by the heat of fire.
Screens

The artist tried to maintain the compromise between the realistic
“calligraphy” and full abstraction. While standing between these two
types of artistic expression, the painter wants to avoid literalness and,
on the other hand, she avoids ambiguity and unjustified speculations that
result only from the emotional perception of a work of art. The painting
luminescence is the artist’s major formal problem. She achieves this  ARCHETYPE, 2010 OWN TECHNIQUE ON CANVAS 55X39 IN. | 140X100 CM.
special, artistic effect thanks to her own painting technology inspired by SCREENS SILHOUETTES, 2012 OWN TECHNIQUE ON CANVAS 78.5X39 IN. | 140X100 CM. 
the glaze technique with the use of a transparent polymer. The glazed MARIONNETTE VIOLET, 2013 OWN TECHNIQUE ON CANVAS 78.5X39 IN. | 140X100 CM. 
and luminous form is an artistic impulse. It overcomes the “superficial” SCARAB, 2010, OWN TECHNIQUE ON CANVAS 78.5X39 IN. | 140X100 CM. 

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