With a splinter in its hand

Anna Myszkowiak is defending her diploma at the University of Arts in Poznań in 2025, but even during her studies she drew attention to herself as a sculptor whose works have great power to affect the senses, consciousness and emotions of their audience. This power is enchanted in realisations that are economical in form, often fragile and materially delicate, but uncompromising in an emotional sense. Myszkowiak takes the viewer beyond the comfort zone - to the borderland where the human body meets the outside world. This is a territory where categories such as touch are ambivalent, and the distinction between pleasure and pain, caress and injury becomes blurred.

Similarly ambiguous and multidimensional is the way in which the artist's sculptures are received - works in which the tactile becomes visible, and what is seen is felt with the whole body. It is no coincidence that it is the skin, the hands, but also the eyes, the gaze and the eyesight that are the recurring points of reference for Myszkowiak's compositions. The artist does not create figurative representations, but is even further away from abstraction - her works resemble organisms, brought into existence so that we can empathise with them.

In constructing her sculptures, she uses a variety of materials - from paper, metal and wood to industrial materials and everyday objects used and developed in unconventional ways. Regardless of the technique used, the matter in her works always seems to have an animated character.

The “With a splinter in its hand” exhibition will present Anna Myszkowiak's latest realisations - works created from wood, metal, MDF, synthetic resin and steel wool, among others. Each of them constitutes a bold formal experiment in the development of a personal yet universal sculptural language, which is born out of the dialectic of the physical properties of matter and the feeling of corporeality. The sculptures do not form a linear narrative - rather, they are a sequence of experiences enchanted into artistic forms that allow us to touch areas beyond the boundaries of verbal concepts, yet fundamental to the ways in which a sentient being experiences its being in the world.

Curator: Stach Szabłowski