Professor Targońska’s solo exhibition In Motion. Maria Targońska will be accompanied by a selection of works created by her current and former students from the Drawing Studio at the Faculty of Painting: Zuzanna Dolega, Marta Garbaczewska, Magdalena Kamińska, Barbara Kuchnowska, Agnieszka Nienartowicz, Antoni Walas, Marta Wirtel and Wirginia Wojtania. The participating artists completed their graduation works or supplements under Prof. Maria Targońska’s supervision, demonstrating the broad spectrum of possibilities offered by hyperrealist, conceptual, abstract, portrait and landscape drawing.
Maria Targońska’s exhibition at the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art will summarise and showcase the artist’s oeuvre from her graduation in 1980 until today. The displayed works, both individual and created in series, will exemplify subsequent stages of her art, united by the medium of drawing. For Targońska, drawing is a pivotal means of representation – the only one she remains unchangeably faithful to, treating it as the primeval form of human expression and the source of art. However, rather than realistically depicting the matter at hand, the artist’s drawings are a poetic record of reality transformed through her imagination. Their main subject are journeys – not just around Poland or to far-off locations such as China or Australia, but also those to the world of imagination, emotions and personal experience, whose trace is recorded in the lines.
Since the outset of her artistic path, Maria Targońska has engaged in a dialogue between drawing and painting: combining natural pigments, such as gold, silver, copper and graphite, using canvas alongside paper as her support, constantly exploring and infusing her works with new painterly qualities. Notably, the most common impulse behind her drawings is landscape devoid of human image and presence. The title of the exhibition refers to Targońska’s nomadic nature and her manner of expression conveyed through the movement of the hand and her explorations within the very medium of drawing. To quote the artist: “In my compositions, I strive to employ carefully finished chiaroscuro drawing. I structure my forms through fine or delicate modelling. To me, drawing is a trace. A trace of the path covered over time, the path of thoughts, the path of the hand. A jotted down process of a conscious – though perhaps at first unconscious – drive to follow the initial impulse”.
Maria Targońska graduated from the State School of Fine Arts (currently the Academy of Fine Arts) in 1980, having completed her studies at the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Arts and her final work in Prof. Kazimierz Śramkiewicz’s studio. She has been working at her alma mater since 1981, for many years serving as the Chair of the Drawing Department at the Faculty of Painting. She has shown her work at 35 solo exhibitions and taken part in more than 250 group shows in Poland and abroad. Her drawings are held in Polish and foreign collections, e.g. in USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, the UK, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany, Israel, Georgia and Lithuania.
Zuzanna Dolega (b. 1990) lives and creates her visual art in her native Gdynia. She specialises in pyrography, which she invariably combines with paper art, artistic textiles and site-specific installations for places and people, employing light and the play of shadows. In 2022, she received her PhD in art for her doctoral thesis “A sensitive reader of reality. In search of empathy”. She has taken part in a number of exhibitions and projects combining art and research, both in Poland and abroad. Her works have been shown internationally, and are featured in collections in Poland, Germany, Denmark, Macedonia, Turkey, Tunisia, Japan, China, Australia, Argentina and Ecuador. Dolega belongs to the prestigious IAPMA association. She is a holder of several scholarships and awards, including the City of Gdańsk’s Award for Young Cultural Creatives, 2020.
Marta Garbaczewska was born in Szczecin, where she still lives. She works with prints and drawings, and organises cultural events. Having completed the Secondary School of Art in Szczecin, she went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, where she received her MA, having completed her graduation work at Prof. Maria Targońska’s studio and supplement at Prof. Czesław Tumielewicz’s studio. Since 2012, she has taught drawing, painting and held multiple artistic workshops. In 2014, she opened her studio called “If I had a hammer” in Szczecin, which acts as a space for work, creative and casual meetings as well as a mini art shop and gallery. Passionate for linocut and dry pastel, she reaches for pencil when feeling nostalgic. She has a dog that travels by train. Selected exhibitions: 2023 – solo exhibition, Katarzyna Napiórkowska’s Art Gallery, Brussels, Belgium | 2022 – Forests in the Gardens, solo exhibition, Ogrody Śródmieście, Szczecin | 2022 – 12th Small-Format Painting Triennial, post-competition group show, Wozownia Art Gallery, Toruń.
Magdalena Kamińska (b. 1999) graduated from the Józef Czapski Secondary Art School in Grudziądz. She is currently studying at the Faculty of Painting of the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts. Since 2021, she has taught drawing and painting at Edukreska. She works with drawing, painting and sculpture. Her focus is transience. She is interested in the finite nature of all life and the impermanence of inanimate objects.
Barbara Kuchnowska (b. 1998) presented her graduation work (graded excellent) at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk on 29 June 2023, at Prof. Maciej Świeszewski’s studio, with a supplement completed at Prof. Maria Targońska’s studio. She paints figurative representations of birds, expressively using colour and contrast as her focal point. Her drawings are centred on the observation of bones under a microscope, and she works without sketches. Kuchnowska is a three-times holder of the Dean’s Scholarship for the best students. Awarded in the 4 th edition of the Wojciech Fangor Nationwide Student Competition, she received a mention of honour from the jury of the 11 th DRAWING NOW International Exhibition of Student Drawings and a honourable mention in the Inspirations 2022 competition organised by the Paleta Contemporary Art Foundation. She received the honourable distinction of the jury at the 2023 Graduations post-competition exhibition at the Legnica Art Gallery. In 2023, the Gdańsk Society of Friends of the Arts granted Kuchnowska a honourable award for her graduation work “On red”.
Agnieszka Nienartowicz (b. 1991 in Jelenia Góra) is a painter working predominantly with oil painting. Her artistic explorations are centred around religion and its effect on humans. The artist’s trademark are portraits of tattooed women. Nienartowicz sources her tattoo motifs from Christian iconography. In the formal layer, her works allude to Old Master paintings. The artist lives and works in Kraków. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, completing her MA in 2016. Her latest exhibitions include: Agnieszka Nienartowicz, Nicodim Gallery, New York (2024, upcoming), DISEMBODIED, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); Sweet Burden, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2023, solo); MATERNITY LEAVE: NONE OF WOMEN BORN, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim Gallery in cooperation with Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Longing for Another World, Pilipczuk Gallery, Copenhagen (2022, solo); The Hardest Is to Feel Free, BWA Gallery, Jelenia Góra (2021, solo).
Antoni Walas (b. 1999) graduated from the Secondary Art School in Słupsk and is currently a fifth-year student of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He won the Grand Prix of the 4th Przegrys student competition (2023), the second award of the 3rd Przegrys student competition (2021), the Dean of the Faculty of the Arts award of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in the 11 th DRAWING NOW International Student Drawing Exhibition (2024), and the main award in the Film Poster Competition (2020). He is the thrice holder of the vice-chancellor’s scholarship for artistic merit and academic record. His works have been shown at the solo show Morphology at One Piece Gallery (2024) and as part of group exhibitions: 20/20, P25 Gallery (2024), two editions of ART’EM ALL, Plenum
(2023, 2022), 12th Small-Format Painting Triennial, Toruń (2022), Interferences, El Gallery (2020), 2019 Debuts, Słupsk (2019). Walas is the founder of music groups Back to Green (2012–2015), The Last Fuck (2021-...) and member of Triandria.
Marta Wirtel (b. 1990 in Lublin) completed her BA in Graphic Arts at the Faculty of Arts of the Marie Curie-Skłodowska’s University in Lublin. In 2017, she graduated from the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk; her graduation work in drawing was supervised by Prof. Maria Targońska. She works with drawing, icons and monumental painting. Her art explores themes related to the family home, interpersonal relations and the search for beauty in simple everyday experiences.
Wirginia Wojtania (b. 1998 in Wejherowo) graduated from the Magdalena Abakanowicz State Secondary Art School in Gdynia. Between 2017 and 2022, she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. In June 2022, she received her MA in painting (graded excellent) from Prof. Maciej Świeszewski’s studio, with a supplement in drawing completed under Prof. Maria Targońska. She received three scholarships of the Vice-Chancellor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Wojtania won the Grand Prix of the 2nd PRZEGRYS Interfaculty Competition and Drawing Review for students of the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts. Her two works, created under the guidance of Prof. Robert Florczak, were presented in 2019 at the 10 th SUERMB Forum at the Polish Baltic Philharmonic and the Gala Dinner at the European Solidarity Centre. She has taken part in group shows: Very Young Painting 2, exhibition of students of the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts, Punkt Gallery, 2019; Young Painting from Gdańsk – 2022/2023 Graduation Works, 2023. Wojtania was the finalist of the 2023 Eibisch Award competition organised by the Franciszka Eibisch Foundation.
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