The artwork of Aleksandra Waliszewska is disturbing on a whole other level! When I look at her work, my childhood nightmares are coming to life. Her use of color and her artistic style distracts the viewer from how dark her subject matter really is. Her focus is on violence and blood, and many of her pieces feature […]
Artwork by contemporary Polish painter Aleksandra Waliszewska
[EDIT: This article was originally written in 2016. I have noticed a large amount of traffic pointing to it and realized it was all directed from the same blog post. Please allow me to point out th…
We spoke with the painter Aleksandra Waliszewska, whose unique childhood experiences read like something out of a novel.
Aleksandra Waliszewska, one of the brightest talents of the contemporary Polish art scene, creates bold paintings that have attracted a wide range of admirers
Aleksandra Waliszewska nasceu no ano de 1976, em Varsóvia, na Polônia. É formada pela Academia de Belas Artes de Varsóvia. Seu estilo...
Aleksandra Waliszewska is a Polish contemporary artist with a unique style rooted in dark motifs of visual culture.
It's enough of a recommendation that my friend Katarzyna Szenajch (a visual artist herself) likes Waliszewska: "I seriously like her, cause she's authentically bonkers. I am hugely impressed by her bonkerness. Look at her last.fm: there's Lil Wayne! Or her pet society gallery WTF? Besides, she added me on last.fm, that's nice :) Oh, yeah, and her paintings are good, hehe" Aleksandra Waliszewska started with beautiful big-scale oil old masters-like painitings. Authentically beautiful. She would receive praise and scholarships, have books published, and all that. But she suddenly changed her style completely. In a really interesting interview for Wysokie Obcasy, she says her old paintings became tiring. That she would labour at them, but have no pleasure from it: "The last one took me six months. And I decided it was mediocre". Now she paints one or two small format gouaches every day, and most depict little girls. Little girls among monsters; ambiguous, disturbing, uncomfortable situations. And she says it gives her real pleasure: "Before, I had a task-oriented approach to work. Now I want to do what gives me pleasure. And it so happens that I find painting little girls in oppressive situations pleasurable." She insists her work is in no way autobiographic - rather, it's a return to what she used to paint when she was 4 or 5: "I would paint a big head with various animals coming out of it. Or elephants with dead cats. Then at 7 I started drawing naked women running away from Martians, who try to catch them on lassos. Or naked running families." Provocatively, she says it's her boyfriend who often comes up with the titles: Paedophile's Death, Handball with Fritzl, Guardian. "Guardian shows a sleeping girl and a goat. You can't tell if he's protecting her, or lurking. I don't really know myself what it's about - it's a mystery to me too". The most important thing is the composition, not the story - that's secondary. And Waliszewska doesn't feel any discomfort: "I prefer to treat [my paintings] as grotesque". This one reminds me of The Tiger's Bride, a short story by Angela Carter It's really interesting to speculate on the victim/perpetrator status in her paintings, the ambiguity of the roles of little girls and beasts. It's not a simple case of "the drawing is empowering when the girl wins". Most of the time, it's completely unclear what the outcome is, and as Waliszewska says herself, she is not interested in it. She likes drawing naked girls surrounded by monsters - it really takes guts to admit it, and say it out loud. It's still such a touchy issue, deriving pleasure from not-beauty, not-serenity, in whatever form. Gore, sex and violence are already controversial, but with the added references to paedophilia Waliszewska is really walking on shaky ground, tackling such issues as the age limits of sexuality, the role of bodily exposure, idols, fetishes, and all this is a context of gender - her protagonists are always female. I, too, admire her bonkerness, as well as courage. All quotes translated by me from the Wysokie Obcasy interview by Paulina Reiter. All photos from Aleksandra Waliszewska's Flickr photostream. Waliszewska has a Facebook, blog, Flickr, and an exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (until May 23rd). This Saturday, there is a closing party with live music and stuff. (and if you go, Centre for Contemporary Art (CSW) has a really cool Roni Horn exhibit, too)
Aleksandra Waliszewska nasceu no ano de 1976, em Varsóvia, na Polônia. É formada pela Academia de Belas Artes de Varsóvia. Seu estilo...
This piece of art by Aleksandra Waliszewska was floating around on my Facebook news feed the other day… ..and I promptly became infatuated. I saved it to my desktop, vowing to myself that I&…
The young painter creates a new Gothic style that meshes surrealist imagery, medieval mystery, fairy tale themes and references to the likes of Hieronim Bosch and Francisco de Goya.
Zarne Koty z Twarzy Albino animals vs People. Skinhead in the Wood. Syrena. ...
Art, music, cinema, cats
Aleksandra Waliszewska
