Agata Borowa Choice of Vagueness

Opening: Friday, 17 January 2025, opening hour: 18.00

Open until: 28 February 2025, opening hours: TUE-SAT 12.00-18.00

„The unimportant functions of the speculators of reality, who wondered whether the white horse was real because of its white color or because it was material; nor of the preachers of the six dynasties, who, like philosophers, delighted in discussing purity and abstraction”.
Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea, 1906

The distinction between reality and fiction has been one of the most recurring issues in human thought since its inception. It is also one of the most fascinating challenges that art has presented us with in its various forms and media throughout history. This question remains relevant today, questioning the essence of our own nature: how do we perceive reality, how do we interpret it, where does reality end and fiction begin?

In Agata Borowa’s works, the line between reality and fiction blurs to such an extent that nothing is what it seems – not even ourselves and the world around us. Her hyperrealism, enriched with an element of anxiety, does not concern random fragments of reality. It focuses on surfaces that – so real and yet seemingly empty – seem to border on abstraction. This is a meticulous study of surfaces that, although already deserted, conceal traces of someone’s presence. They force us to think, imagine and recognize what could have happened. In this magical moment, we discover the fullness of emptiness in our contemplative solitude, trying to understand where fiction begins and what infinite possibilities it conceals.

The traces left on the surface subtly materialize – they seem identical, but each surface is different, each carries its own hidden story, like a well-guarded secret enclosed in a harmonious, hermetic composition. Sometimes color seems to unite these surfaces, then we have to get closer to explore what is happening, why they were made this way, what they want to tell us and what we ourselves tell ourselves when we look at them. It is a face-to-face dialogue – between the work and the viewer.

Borowa’s paintings sometimes look like crumpled fabrics, as if they were sheets retaining the heat of the body that touched them. Removed from the context of the bedroom and bed, they remain lonely, hiding their history. Other times, they are an empty billboard, clumsily covered with white paper, which – deprived of its commercial function as an advertising medium – remains abandoned in an apparent absence, permeated with melancholy.

In other works, the blue horizon appears – the colour of peace, protection, sky and sea – with undulations that can resemble both waves and gusts of wind moving clouds. Gold and its shades evoke associations with King Midas, Buddhist purity, wealth, and also the rays of the sun. Black in Agata’s paintings is not a negation of colour, but its sublimation – in tondos, whose round forms refer to both artistic frames and the spheres of sounds that build our universe. Regardless of the colour used, all these paintings conceal a trace of emptiness that becomes pure poetry.

However, the mystery does not end there. After quietly traversing the nooks, folds, waves and other signs, the question arises about their essence and the way they were created. The artist surrounds the creative process itself with an alchemical silence that makes us hypothesize about the technique of each work. But is it really important? Shouldn’t we reach deeper, to the source of inspiration for these paintings? It is there, in the process of creation, that true magic is born – reality transforms into an apparent fiction, which Agata shows us, drawing inspiration from nature, light and its reflections.

The exhibition includes both the artist’s latest works and series previously shown in other spaces. This time, however, the way of presentation reveals the versatility of her work, developed over the years in a solid, mature and unique language. Her hyperrealism, released in dialogue with abstraction, connects with earlier works in which body gestures were presented in great close-up. These works speak quietly, telling about the discretion of movement and emptiness as a poetic element. They require the viewer to look carefully – maybe even a second or third – to notice the difference between reality and fiction and to face the question: what choice will we make?

Inés R. Artola
curator of the exhibition

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Agata Borowa, from series For rent, 2024, acrylic, canvas, 110 x 160 cm

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