Ewa Juszkiewicz: Locks With Leaves And Swelling Buds
Curated by Guillermo Solana
April 20, 2024 – September 1, 2024
Palazzo Cavanis
Dorsoduro 920 30123
Venice, Italy
Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso is pleased to present the solo exhibition ‘Ewa Juszkiewicz: Locks With Leaves And Swelling Buds‘ curated by Guillermo Solana, Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. For more than a decade, Juszkiewicz has created paintings based on portraits of women by European artists, especially those from the 18th and 19th centuries, while examining “where the boundaries of the portrait were and what effects she could achieve by means of deformation and distortion.”
Joseph van Lerius)”, oil on canvas, 70 x
55 cm, 2020. Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech.
In 2010, Juszkiewicz painted a series of masked characters in which the markedly feminine clothing contrasted with the violence suggested by the mask. The profaciality mask hid one face while proposing another, symbolic or fantastic, animal or supernatural. The anti-faciality mask, meanwhile, hides the first face and prevents the appearance of a second one, blocking the reproduction of faciality.
By 2013-2014, the dominance of the anti-faciality mask was consolidated in Juszkiewicz’s work. Any object capable of replacing a head or any material capable of enveloping it would be used: hypertrophied mushrooms, a bouquet of flowers, a tangle of branches and leaves, a combed or braided head of hair, a bandage made of luxurious fabrics…. When these objects and materials appear in the place of the face, the viewer looks for signs of an eye, nose, mouth, for signs of a facial outline; sometimes, but for an instant, they may think they have found them, but her reading is immediately frustrated. The anti-faciality mask actively resists our desire to decipher a face in it.
Gérard)”, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm, 2023.
Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech.
In her versions of old portraits, Juszkiewicz cultivates a traditional pictorial craft, painting in layers, with many glazes, following the brushstrokes of the original work. But her technical virtuosity would be useless were it not at the service of a transgressive project.
By covering the face of historical portraits, Juszkiewicz challenges the very essence of this genre: she destroys the portrait as such. Her paintings based on old portraits are no longer portraits of anyone in particular, but representations of the condition of women under patriarchy. And, as she points out, at the heart of the intervened portrait she drives the stake of another genre: the still life, to which belong the fabrics, flowers, fruits, and other objects the artist uses as masks, subverting the traditional hierarchy of genres and the culture/nature dichotomy.
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun)”, oil on
canvas, 130 x 100 cm, 2020.
Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech.
— Guillermo Solana, Artistic Director of Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum This exhibition is organized by FABA (Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso) and supported by Almine Rech.
Ewa Juszkiewicz: Locks With Leaves And Swelling Buds opens on the April 20, 2024 until September 1, 2024 at Palazzo Cavanis
©2024 Ewa Juszkiewicz
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