nail varnish, acrylic, canvas, 100 x 100 cm signed, dated and described on the back: MARTYNA ŚCIBIOR/RESIDENTIALITY DOESN'T HAVE TO STAY/2023
The painting was created at the beginning of 2023, in winter, in the studio on Grochowska Street. I painted it with leftover nail polish that I receive from women since 2013. In my painting, varnish is a carrier of everyday life. I observe moments at the end of the road to get/get something, but still just before reaching the goal. The moments just before. When emotions are at their highest level, when their wide spectrum mixes together, still in uncertainty, but with great excitement. It is still possible to withdraw from everything. The surfaces of the images pulsate, bulge, merge, separate. They are not symmetrical, not planned, unpredictable.
Susan Sontag wrote that we are here only five minutes, and we absorb centuries. I relish the emotion.
Martyna Scibior
April 2023 Martyna Scibior (1985, Lublin. Lives and works in Zawada near Lublin. In 2012 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw with a degree in Media Art. She completed her diploma "Stages" in the Studio of Painting Space of Prof. Leon Tarasewicz and Dr. Pawel Susid in 2012 , annex to the diploma entitled "Psssy" in the Studio of Spatial Activities of Prof. Miroslaw Balka.
A painter who in 2013 swapped paints for leftover nail polish, which she collects from people. Her paintings, which consist of the repeated gesture of applying nail polish to the canvas, as if on nails, allude to knitting, crocheting, or embroidery, repetitive domestic activities performed by women that require patience.
She has participated in many solo and group exhibitions. Her works can be found
in the collections of PKO Bank Polski, Hotel Europejski, and the Starak Family Foundation.
Awards and distinctions:
2013 Tillberg Design Award in the Geppert Competition, Wroclaw.
2013 Format magazine award in the E. Geppert Competition, Wroclaw.
2012 Finalist of the Siemens Art Prize Competition.
Selected solo exhibitions:
2021 "Aesthetic Predation," Visiting Gallery, Warsaw, Poland.
2019 "Hybrid", Elektor Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
2018 "Polish nail/Nail polish", Aneks Gallery, Dom Chemika, Pulawy.
2018 "Tangent points/nail polish", R20 Gallery, UAP, Poznań
2015 "Circle/Kreis", Austrian Culture Forum, Warsaw, Poland.
2015 "Criterion," as part of the Soon project, Spectra Art Space, Warsaw, Poland
2014 "To mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, nieces, friends, store ladies". Nałęczów Cultural Center
2013 Debuts 2013, Tarasin Gallery in Kalisz.
2013 "BOXING HELENA" Art Gallery in Legnica.
Selected group exhibitions:
2017 "What about this abstraction?", Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warsaw.
2014 "Doubt" Monopol Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
2014 "Road to Freedom" Art Gallery, Wloclawek, Poland
2014 "NordArt" Das Kunstwerk Carlshütte, Büdelsdorf
2014 "Road to Freedom" group exhibition, Art Gallery in Plock, Poland
2014 "Plein-air with Milosz" post-exhibition at PKO Bank headquarters and "Spokojna" gallery, Warsaw.
2013 "Attention. Painting!"Post-competition exhibition at Awangarda Gallery, Geppert Competition
2012 Exhibition of the Best Diplomas of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw "Coming Out".
2012 Exhibition of the Finalists of the Siemens Artistic Award, Salon Akademii, Warsaw.
2012 "Where is Painting?" aTAK Gallery
