Agata Bogacka: Fields of Conflict

Private View | Thursday 24 March 6 - 8pm

Edel Assanti is pleased to present Fields of Conflict, Agata Bogacka’s first solo exhibition in the UK. 

Bogacka’s abstract paintings are characterised by competing planes of colour in constant states of transition, creating formal imbalances and tensions. The compositions enact dialogues, negotiations and conflicts by visualising the structural dynamics that underpin all levels of human experience.

Sidestepping literal references and depictions, Bogacka is concerned with the territorial thresholds that define all relationships between individual entities, describing the subject matter of her paintings as “pure situations”. If abstraction as an artistic strategy has roots in the conjuring of extra-sensory, non-objective worlds, Fields of Conflict, comprising self-contained series bearing titles such as Disagreement, Inequality, Annexation, invites us to question the lineage of societal conditions through which everyday interpersonal relations are formed. 

Bogacka’s mesmerising abstraction developed from the Post-Pop figurative approach of her early career, that entailed a dissolving of boundaries between figure and space, or signifier and signified, in a methodology that found a broad context with the practices of the Grupa Ładnie and Wilhelm Sasnal. Although Bogacka’s vocabulary became increasingly abstract and reduced over time, traces of earlier work are perceptive in her concise use of colour and suffusion with concerns that are both profoundly personal and sociopolitical.

The paintings are created through pentimento, a technique defined by the persistent presence of earlier compositional layers that have been painted over. Bogacka’s process is intuitive and spontaneous, as each layer produces the conditions for its own erasure. Wrangling with internal conflicts underpinned by events transpiring in the real world, the canvas becomes a surface upon which deliberations and conflicts are played out. Working with open planes, diluted acrylic paint is applied using a variety of methods, combining impasto surfaces textured with pigment, masked out shapes, broad strokes and thinly applied washes. 

Phantom layers linger in the compositions in a cycle of dissensus, evoking the fragile imbalances and frictions that characterise social environments and relationships, equally referencing boundaries drawn up by political regimes. The contact and dissolution between fields of colour signal the permeability of such constructions. Bogacka’s interaction of colour, the sharp boundaries she paints and their softening, function also as an allusion to negotiation and intersubjective moments of compromise, sharing and resisting that define communication. Bogacka’s new work demonstrates the capacity for dynamic abstraction to serve as a coherent instrument for scrutinising the forces that both shape and deform society.

Agata Bogacka (b.1976) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2001. Recent exhibitions include, BWA Tarnów, Tarnów, Poland (2021); City Art Centre (MOS), Gorzów, Poland (2021); National Museum, Gdańsk, Poland (2021); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland (2019); Instituto Buena Bista, Curacao, Country of Curaçao (2014). Her work is held in public collections including, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland; Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland; National Museum, Gdańsk, Poland; The ING Polish Art Foundation, Warsaw, Poland; Museum Jerke, Recklinghausen, Germany. Bogacka lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.