K&K Art Galeria » May 16, 2026 Gallery on the Right Bank of the Vistula

May 16, 2026 Gallery on the Right Bank of the Vistula

Tytuł

12 May 2026

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CZAS TRWANIA-

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Unfinished Portrait

Zofia Kubicka

There is a paradox at the very heart of sculpture: it is an art of lifeless matter, and yet its deepest desire is life. Not photographic preservation, but energy: the tension of a muscle before a leap, the tremor of a breath, the moment suspended between one step and the next. Zofia Kubicka understands this paradox better than most. Her works are not representations of reality, but dreams of the human being—illusions that deliberately remain unfinished.

In her latest series, the artist expands her medium to include fabric, wood and found objects. This is a shift from monumental outdoor sculpture towards intimate forms enclosed in grey-painted wooden box frames—reminiscent at once of reliquaries, shadow theatres and drawers of memory. Each work is a miniature world, enclosed yet brimming with meaning, as if seeking to push its contents beyond its literal frame.

In her sewn bas-reliefs, the artist departs from the traditional understanding of sculpture as a heavy and durable form, replacing it with soft materials: fabric, thread and embroidery. Faces emerge from the texture of stitched fabric fragments, while the traces of sewing remain a deliberate creative gesture—thread not only binds the composition together, but becomes a record of emotion and cultural signs. The delicacy of the material contrasts with the force of the message.

“When the Morning Dawn Breaks,” one of the series’ most moving works, shows the face of the Madonna emerging from a tangle of fraying denim and fragments of earth-like fabric. The juxtaposition of a sacred image with everyday material is not a profanation, but an affirmation—the sacred is present in the very matter of life, in what is worn and real.

The wooden wind turbines rising from the composition point to the present day: we no longer harvest crops from the fields, but electrical energy—a new, distorted image of abundance.

“Harvest” is a portrait of Mother Earth in a moment of generosity: a woman’s face rises from intertwined strips of fabric forming lush braids and roots, surrounded by red felt spheres—apples, gifts of the earth. The composition has the character of an altar to the harvest, an act of thanksgiving offered to nature. Here, fabric becomes fertile soil.

“The Straw Figures” is an ambiguous work, deliberately constructed to be so. Shapes sewn from fabric, resembling curled-up bodies or organs, hang from butcher’s hooks—a reference to the famous scene in Wyspiański’s “The Wedding”: a collective trance, an inability to act, the slumber of a people enclosed within a circle of their own illusions. Yet the scene also allows for a more brutal reading: an abattoir, a lullaby, a puppet-maker’s workshop. The artist does not confine this work to a single interpretation—ambiguity is its guiding principle.

“Marzanna” is among the artist’s more daring works. In a dark box, pillows and layers of fabric embroidered with black horse silhouettes form the bed of an old woman awaiting the end. Fabric spilling over the edge of the box suggests time no longer held in bounds. In Slavic culture, horses guide souls to the afterlife; here they wait patiently, ready. The work brings together the intimacy of a bedroom and the cosmic dimension of death, without pathos, but with immense tenderness.

Kubicka rarely gives faces an expression. Concentration, absence, silence—this is her language. Emotion is conveyed through gesture, material and composition. Her inspiration in Polish traditions—religious, literary and natural—is constant and profound, yet not folkloric: it is a living matter of the imagination. The sacred does not dwell here in churches or museums, but in the bedroom, the garden, in dreams and in dying. In what is worn and real.

Her studies at the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, completed with a diploma in 1994 in Professor Jan Kucz’s studio, gave the artist an awareness that material is not neutral. Since then, she has been developing a language that is at once classical and modern, intimate and cosmic. 2024 – Scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. Her works are held in private collections in Poland, Spain, the United States, Italy and England.

The exhibition runs from 16 May 2026 to 30 May 2026.

Po Prawej Stronie Sztuki Gallery, 15/1A Konopacka Street, Warsaw

Email. - info@poprawejstroniewisly.pl