The young Polish artist, Agnieszka Polska, is presenting a series of videos and photographs created in recent years in a large-scale installation in the Salzburger Kunstverein. Polska’s materials are illustrations from old newspapers, magazines, and books that she animates and puts together into dreamlike, surreal new videos. Polska’s artistic research focuses on the aspect of memory, both in reference to the rich history of Polish avant-garde art as well as the psychological connotations of forgetting, as analyzed by Sigmund Freud. Two videos shown in the exhibition concern Polish art history: “How the Work is Done,” the history of an art strike at the Academy of Art in Krakow in 1956, and “Sensitization to Colour,” the reconstruction of an exhibit by the Polish avant-garde artist, Włodzimierz Borowski. “The Forgetting of Proper Names,” on the other hand, addresses the psychopathology of everyday life.

An alchemistic approach is inherent in all of her works and breathes new, glorified life into the found objects. The lost and forgotten develops a new “unearthly” presence in her artwork.

Agnieszka Polska was born in 1985 in Lublin. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and at Berlin University of the Arts. Polska lives and works in Warsaw.