Ula Niemirska - Meteoropathics

Opening:

January 20th 2017, 6 pm - 9 pm

Start date: 21.01.2017

End date: 03.02.2017

Patrons and Partners:

About the exhibition:

Female boxing with a barometer

The works of Ula Niemirska are astonishing. In all respects. They are enormously diversified. The artist uses a multitude of techniques that can be collectively covered by the name "collage". They include painting with acrylic paints, spray or ink; drawing with sharpies, crayons, pencils and pens; all forms of bricolage utilizing textiles, paper and various randomly found and compulsively collected objects, both organic and inorganic. Some of the most bizarre include used teabags or peanut shells. I do however believe that Ula's works might contain even more outlandish objects. A guest visiting her workshop is immediately greeted with two offers: one of tea and the other to paste the just used teabag into a currently worked painting. I passed the opportunity, not feeling competent enough.

However, Ula Niemirska's work does not end on collage. There are also videos in which the artist is often performing herself, becoming an actress and protagonist. Next, there are various spacial forms. In all, Ula Niemirska's artistic space seems boundless. The artist dominates the earth, taking what inspires her at the moment, what she needs or just what she accidentally comes across. Everything is of use and suddenly everything becomes art. And not just any art, but an especially interesting kind of art.

Niemirska's abundance of techniques and formats is followed by horror vacui, an absolute fear of emptiness. The artist states that she values clean and clear expositions and compositions, but she is lying. This is evidently not the case. She is the goddess of overload. She cannot stop adding and pasting. She is constantly bringing, hanging or positioning something more. She keeps rearranging finished expositions and I am certain that she will keep doing that during the exhibition. It is also the case with specific works. To finish her creative process you just have to buy a piece and take it away from her.

The excess in the works of Ula Niemirska is also an excess of ideas and projects. The author always has at least some ready ideas that she would like to expand upon in a series of works and to display in the form of an exhibition. Similarly, "Meteoropaths" are a collection of the artist's most recent works, prepared specifically for the exposition in Xanadu. They portray an intimate aspect of femininity, sometimes even embarrassing. Although we all react to changes in weather and atmospheric pressure, getting headaches and becoming irritable or radiating cheerfulness on sunny days, it is women who are viewed as guilty of characterological instability or even historically stigmatized hysteria and moodiness linked with natural cycles. But let us be honest, most of us react negatively to the barometer's shenanigans. The magical word "migraine" says it all while simultaneously barely meaning anything, for it is very hard to explain it. And although Niemirska's works do not only reference migraine - it would be a crime to trivialize them so - some of the pieces perfectly illustrate this state despite it's ability to elude verbal definitions. Nevertheless, "Meteoropaths" are so much more; the fight with the barometer is but an excuse to talk about what is happening with our emotions. To talk about interpersonal relations, about emotions that are strong and very strong, those lined with sexuality and fury. To show just how much what transpires somewhere among the clouds or stars also transpires within us. Niemirska allows us to become like the cumuli and the stratosphere, and in a encyclopedic way at that.

Agnieszka Gniotek

Reportage from the opening:
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works:

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska

Ula Niemirska