Each of Małgorzata’s works presented at the exhibition is a separate, single and one-time world, but a selected collection of them can be treated as discoveries of the artist’s homogeneous world, which, like every world, can be discovered only and always in fragments. In each of them, the visible spaces and structures, various materials, colors and textures are layered and piled up, some elements touch each other, others adhere to each other or react with each other, giving a new matter and texture. What keeps them within the ground is gravity, stronger or weaker, so sometimes a piece breaks away from the center. ‘These are works that sometimes exceed the hard definitions of drawing, they are made in a mixed technique, mostly as a collage, with varying degrees of going into space’ (M. Zbroińska-Piątek).

Thanks to layers, connections and translucences, the difference between the background and the figure disappears and what is strengthened is the difference between the massiveness of spots and structures, and the lightness of particles, as well as between the speed of an accelerated line and the slowness of drifting pieces of paper, between various gravity holding the elements in the image. Each of them, be it a dot, a lump, a watery stain, or a slit of light cutting black or a geometrically regular rectangle, everything within the gravitational range of the ground constitutes not chaos but order here. In this you can see the absolutely extraordinary power and mysteriousness of these works, as well as belonging to one world as its fragments. This order is reflected in the title of the exhibition: Cosmos. The cosmos is an ordered universe. The cosmos discovers its order both on a micro and macro scale. The cosmos uses matter, animate and inanimate, arranging it in an order that is always in motion. Man simultaneously creates and discovers the cosmos, in a certain single scope.

Exploring the cosmos depends on the degree of mindfulness. Małgorzata has a natural ability to move on different scales of objects and space, to delve into barely perceptible motes to refer them to a larger structure, which, like a vortex, pulls everything that comes across on its way. A drifting particle and a definite structure meet thanks to the power of the gesture, expressing the artist’s emotion. In these works, gestures / emotions become an important material, because they create an orderly world out of the chaos of individual elements that have found themselves in the orbit of the ground. Emotions are the element that organizes the world of matter. As if they themselves were part of nature with their own internal order. Therefore, it is impossible to look at Małgorzata’s work without seeing her person at the center of it. The Work and the Creator are singular here.

It is fascinating to discover convergences, relationships, similarities between pieces of animate and inanimate matter, between a patch of watered-down pigment on paper and a leek seed. The artist’s insight, intuition and also the artist’s courage make the gesture natural, bold and at the same time very accurate. Each of the works presented here is extremely precise. Surprisingly, the apparent chaos results from the high precision, almost mapping the relationship between particles of different materials and spaces that meet, between absorbed, reflected and filtered light. The artist’s gesture, precise but spontaneous (or precise, because it is spontaneous) can be compared to the movement of the water of a stream, spilling over its heterogeneous substrate. The complicated boundary of the stream, seemingly chaotic and completely free, after all precisely reflects the relief and type of ground, reveals its every incline, depression, convexity, crack, type of ground. By registering the ground – the support and condition of the stream’s existence, the water simultaneously carries silt and sand, smooths the stones, transfers the crystalline nature of the mountain spring into the valleys, collects leaves and insects with the current, and reflects the sky in the surface. In this sense, the boundary line of the stream and the value of its current express the highest logic and order, separating their area as an outcrop of the cosmos. This is how the bizarre relationship between creating and discovering the world can be perceived in Małgorzata’s works, which also consist of photographs and video. “Perhaps this material could be supplemented with photos of various fragments of space, which images probably seep from the subconscious and, processed, reveal themselves as echoes of these frames in my works. Such afterimages, but probably more focused on exploring the inner world than on transferring and superimposing forms…” (M. Zbroińska-Piątek). Without elements of the ground, grass, views recorded on the way to the family home, without soil, forest, meadow, branches, boughs, without leek pericarp, but also without various materials gathered in the studio, without the sun and lights of the city and architecture, there would be no such unusual function time, emotions and space. It would not exist without the wonderful mindfulness that allows the Artist to immerse herself in the microcosm with childlike innocence.

Discovering and creating as well as creating and discovering the world of an image can also be compared to gardening. The cosmos as a garden, where what is and what can be seen and touched is always connected with movement, growth and withering, unfolding and folding, co-created by the gardener’s gesture. It’s just that in the garden, relationships and dependencies are best shown by time, and in Małgorzata’s work – the natural element of emotions that folds and swirls matters in a way that its elements distant in time and space meet and develop new structures, discovering previously unpredictable family relationships. Surprising and revealing are these family resemblances, e.g. a color spot on paper and a leek seed.

Similarly, Gilles Deleuze describes reality using the figure of an infinitely continuous and layered fold, connecting the world of inanimate and animate matter and the spirit. The fold expresses the continuity of matter and soul (which thicken and thin; visibility depends on density). Curves and entanglements, as well as thickening and rarefaction of the fold, cause its fragments, which in the continuity of time and space are very distant from each other, to unexpectedly touch each other or create neighborhoods. This situation is illustrated by the dome of the night sky, which shows celestial bodies in systems and relationships that result only from our earthly perspective, but do not reflect the real distances between them. Reading the fold, as well as reading the reality, is therefore associated with a specific perspective, also emotional. In this sense, the tangles, curves and bends in Małgorzata’s works have a deep meaning, they create the logic of order. “Souls, artworks, bodies and psyches are not independent entities, but all exist on the same plane of immanence, influencing each other, being the effects of the relationship of forces. A fold is a curvature of this plane of influence and intensity, a fold of the matter itself, which results in the creation of beings and entities – as well as works of art, the beauty of images and the harmony of music” (G. Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, 2014, editorial note).

Escape from chaos and attempts to experience the reality of one’s own world as a cosmos concern artists often and become the area of ​​their meetings. Małgorzata met Witold Gombrowicz on her creative path, especially from his latest novel Kosmos, which deals with the creation of reality, an attempt to tame chaos and find logic between events and objects.

But this cosmos can also be seen as architecture if it means structures and relationships, not objects detached from the environment. In this sense, one can see the convergence of Małgorzata’s Cosmos and Kengo Kuma’s architecture, emerging in a constant interchangeable relationship between material and environment, man and place, man and material. In terms of architecture, what is important in Małgorzata’s works is movement, achieved thanks to the light operating in their space and matter. “… my abstract compositions talk about space. I think so, I have an irresistible impression that it always breaks through somewhere and I think that it is worth emphasizing, especially since in the world of design, in which I am immersed every day, space is the main building material for ideological and conceptual theoretical considerations, and tangible matter, which I process during the implementation of interior design projects. I am in love with the relationship between drawing and architecture!” (M. Zbroińska-Piątek).

Barbara Stec, PhD, DSc Eng, KAAFM, ASP Associate Profesor
The text uses fragments of a letter from Małgorzata Zbroińska-Piątek to Barbara Stec.