At first glance, Agata Bogacka’s nine abstract paintings, structured by way of overlapping squares and intersecting color planes and rendered in a palette dominated by blurred pinks and shades of white, look dreamy and undemanding. But that ingenuousness is a visual trap for the conformist eye. The alluring surface has something to hide. The way past the first impression lies in understanding the function of the gradient: color in motion, change as process. More than just a technique, the gradient has become Bogacka’s formal strategy: It blurs edges and establishes new orders. In the diptych Avoidants 1 & 2 (all works 2025), the diagonal line that divides the canvas is drawn through the contrast between white and pink paint. The contrast weakens closer to the center. Whether we imagine that the white makes the pink fade, or that the pink slightly tinges the white, the conclusion is the same: Influence can seep in quietly.
To further break the stasis of pleasant initial response, Bogacka works with distortions and compositional disorder. She exposes her own trials and errors and allows fragments of dark-linen canvas to remain unpainted. In Declarations 10, these fragments take the form of overlapping squares, some of which partially dissolve under a white gradient that both marks the surface and recedes into the background. Planes slide into and out of planes; raw canvas and white paint somehow give the illusion of being layered in alternation. Boundaries falter, and what counts as figure or ground is no longer clear. This obscuring can be read as both a gradual stripping away of rights and a surrender in the struggle over space, extending from the intimacy of two-person entanglements to the mass scale of politics and society. In Bogacka’s abstract planes, there’s a story about how mechanisms of power are shaped both by those who exercise authority and those who are subjected to it.
