Drapery Store

Somewhere in my memory, there was once a literary description of a drapery shop — a place where lush, heavy fabrics filled the space, and color seemed to spill over and complete it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find that passage again. But that’s the way it often is with stories and books — sometimes we simply forget them, and plots and narratives blend together. Or perhaps that shop just appeared to me in a dream? Either way, I can see it clearly in my imagination, and its atmosphere inspired this exhibition.

Bolts
rolls
meters
remnants
rhythm
color
scent

The exhibition, for which I invited Małgorzata Szymankiewicz, Kinga Popiela, and Natalia Brodacka, is built around a sensory experience. Paintings and textiles fill the imagined shelves. The painterly gesture intertwines with the spatial awareness of the gallery; each element enters into dialogue with the others in harmony.

A fabric store is a place where shelves are filled with color — color that we perceive sensually: we don’t just look at it, we touch it, compare it, match it. The same happens in the gallery. There are works one wants to touch, to feel their structure, to grasp their materiality, to experience their effect on us and on the surrounding space.

The exhibition “Drapery Store” (Skład bławatny) is about what is visible and what is invisible — about what lies on the surface and what hides beneath, what is revealed and what remains deeply concealed. I am certain that the artists invited to participate are acutely aware not only of the gesture they make and the trace they leave, but also of the very fabric of the canvas — its weave, weight, tension on the stretcher, or its absence. It is a situation between painting and textile art.

Curator: Natalia Czarcińska
Co-organizers: Jak Malowana Foundation, Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań, Faculty of Art Education and Curatorial Studies, Nowa UAP Foundation
Supporting partners: City Galleries of the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań

The exhibition accompanies the 5th Edition of the Biennale of Artistic Textiles in Poznań.
www.btapoznan.pl
Financed by the City of Poznań — #poznanwspiera