AGNIESZKA BRZEZANSKA

Born 1972 in Gdansk, Poland
Lives and works in Warsaw and Berlin

Education

1998 – 2001 Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Tokio, Japan
1995 – 1997 Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland
1992 – 1995 Academy of Fine Arts, Gdansk, Poland

Solo Exhibitions

2012
Back to the Garden, Galerie Kamm, Berlin, Germany

2011
Dance Waves, Sound Waves, Light Waves, Clifton Benevento, New York, NY
852Hz, Michael Benevento, Los Angeles, CA

2010
Playlist, DAAD, Berlin, Germany
Galactic Resonance, Hotel, London, UK
Cosmic Ecquation, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, Switzerland

2009
ZWEI TAGE DREI NÄCHTE, Agnieszka Brzezanska and Renata Kaminska, Bel Etage, Berlin, Germany
528 Hz, Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland
Venus Conjunct, Galerie Joanna Kamm, Berlin, Germany

2008
Screening, Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland
Nudes, Moons and Horses, Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland
Pulawska 25a, home exhibition, curated by Agnieszka Brzezanska, Warsaw, Poland

2007
L’artiste, Le Modèle et La Peinture, BROADWAY 1602, New York, NY

2006
Tunnel like a Tail, Hotel, London, UK
Warszawa Dla Amatorow / Warsaw for Amateurs, Kordegarda, Zacheta National Art Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
The opposite of the opposite. And the opposite of that, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

2005
Is nothing not enough? BROADWAY 1602, New York, NY
dharma tv, Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen, Innsbruck, Austria
Free Doom, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

2004
Agnieszka Brzezanska/Svetlana Heger, ap4, Geneva, Switzerland

2003
Agnieszka Brzezanska and Janos Fodor Platan Gallery, Budapest, Hungary

2002
Double Happiness, Zacheta Gallery and CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

1997
It is Beneficial to Cross a Big Water, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

Group Exhibitions

2012 (Upcoming)
Insight – Outsight II, Städtische Galerie im Park, Viersen, Germany (February)

2011
In Our Nature, Bel Etage, 800QM, Berlin, Germany
The Joy of Pleasure, VW VeneKlasen Werner, Berlin, Germany
Beautiful Weather, Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw, Poland
Expanded Territory, KAI 10-Arthena Foundation, Warsaw, Poland
One, Another, curated by Stepahnie Roach, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY
From Berlin, Martin Asbaek Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
Draußen ist feindlich, Bel Etage 2011, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, Germany
Brunda Woda – Dirty Water, National Gallery, Sopot, Poland
Starke Emergenz, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
All That Is Unseen, Allan Nederpelt, Brooklyn, NY

2010
Space Adventure, curated by Aleksander Wawrzyniak, Villa Lentza, Szczecin, Poland
Milk Drop Coronet. 30 Exhibitions on the Virtuosity of Thingness, Camera Austria, Graz, Austria
The Zero Budget Biennal | cur. by Joanna Fiduccia, Chris Sharp, Klemm’s, Berlin, germany
Die kleine Improvisation – Polnische Kunst heute, Stadtgalerie Kiel, Kiel, Germany
Tu: Space Adventure, Willa Lentza, Szczecin, Poland
Agnieszka Brzezanska, Miriam Cahn and Mária Bartuszová, Harris Lieberman, New York, NY
The Berlin Box | Kunsthalle Andratx, CCA, Mallorca, Spain
Holy shit (yelled John upon noticing the delicate colours of the sunset), cur. by Fanny
Gonella, PSM Gallery, Berlin, Germany
The Zero Budget Biennial, cur. by Joanna Fiduccia, Chris Sharp, Rockeby, London, UK
The Zero Budget Biennial, cur. by Joanna Fiduccia, Chris Sharp, Pianissimo, MilanPSM Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2009
Cave Painting, curated by Bob Nickas, PSM Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Full of Emptiness, Bel Etage, Berlin, Germany
Prose pour des Esseintes, Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland
ZEIGEN. An audio tour through Berlin by Karin Sander, Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Zwei Tage und drei Nächte, Bel Etage, Berlin, Germany
The Zero Budget Biennial, cur. by Joanna Fiduccia and Chris Sharp, Schleicher + Lange and
Carlos Cardenas Galerie, Paris, France
Sorrow Conquers Happiness, No Local, Myslowice, Poland
Art in cinema – No Local on tour, Poland

2008
Varsavia Saluta Roma, Rome, Italy
Open Space Living ArtTLV, International Biennal for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Fais en sorte que je puisse te parler/mache, dass ich zu dir sprechen kann/ Act so that I can
speak to you, Galerie Kamm, Berlin, Germany
Red Eye Effect, CSW Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
Manual CC – Instructions for Beginners and Advanced Players, Uqbar, Berlin, Germany
Wenus Polska, Krakow, Poland
Forum Expanded, Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin, Germany

2007
Manual, Kronika Gallery, Bytom, Poland
Walk Real Slow, Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles , CA

2006
Housewarming, Swiss Institute, New York, NY
Farewell to Icon / Agnieszka Brzezanska, Håvard Homstvedt, José Lerma, Victor Man,
Elizabeth Neel, and Robert Russell, Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
SOLIDARITY, SOLITUDE, BROADWAY 1602, New York, NY
Keep passing the open windows or Happiness, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany
Private cinema, Willa, Warszaw, Poland
New Documentalists, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
All dressed up with Nowhere to go… , curated by Anke Kempkes, Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, UK
Take one, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, TX

2005
The Pantagruel Syndrom, T1-Turin Triennial, Turin, Italy
EXILE. New York is a good Hotel, BROADWAY 1602, New York, NY
Sicht der Dinge, Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg, Germany

2004
Under the white-and-red flag – New Art from Poland, Vilnus, Tallin, Moscow, Russia

2003
What is Important? – 3rd Ars Baltica Triennial of Photographic Art, Tallinn Art Hall Gallery, Talinn, Estonia Poesis, Kunsthalle Mucsarnok, Budapest, Hungary

2002
The young are realists, really, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

2001
Zawody Malarskie, Galeria Bielska, Bielsko-Biala, Poland

Grants and Awards

2008/09
DAAD Award, Berlin

2005
Bunchsenhausen, Innsbruck, Austria

2004
Collegium Helveticum, Grant by Lndys & Gyr, Zurich, Switzerland

1998-2001
Japanese Governement Scholarship, Tokyo, Japan

2000
Oreste, Mont Escalioso, Italy

2000
“Platform C”, Cappadocia, Turkey

1998
Workshop and City Installation, Chongju, Korea

Bibliography

2011
Starke Emergenz, exh. cat. Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck
Polish! Contemporary Art from Poland, ed. by Żak Branicka Foundation, Berlin, Krakow, Ostfildern
Christopher Knight, “Art Review: Angnieszka Brzezanska at Michael Benevento Gallery,” February 17
Nana Asfour, “Agnieszka Brzezanska, Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves,” Time Out New York, February 22, p.53

2010
Die kleine Improvisation – Polnische Kunst heute, exh. cat. Stadtgalerie Kiel, Kiel
Ronald Jones and Liv Stoltz, “Spirited Away,“ Frieze, Issue 135 November-December, p. 106
Anna Pataczek, “Die neue Seltsamkeit: Agnieszka Brzezanskas Ausflüge in die Esoterik,“ Monopol, Online, March 31
Anna Krawczyk, “Agnieszka Brzezanska,” Flash Art, Issue March – April

2009
Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting by Bob Nickas, phaidon press, London
Asher Penn, „Paging: Bob Nickas on Abstraction,“ Art in America Online, November 5
Quinn Latimer „Agnieszka Brzezanska,“ Frieze, Issue 127 November-December, p. 138

2007
New Phenomena in Polish Art After 2000, Warsaw
“Crystalline darkness,” Piktogram, issue 08, p. 118-125
Photography now, Portfolio review and cover, by Claudia Stein & Heide Hausler
Agnieszka Brzezanska Review by Sam Thorne, frieze, March, p. 200
Quinn Latimer, „Introducing: Agnieszka Brzezanska,“ Modern Painters, Dec 2006 – Jan 2007, New York /London, p. 85 – 86

2004
Agnieszka Brzezanska – Der Agonie des Verstehens entwischt, Text by Claudia Jolles, Meridian, Newsletter
Free Doom, Agnieszka Brzezanska ,with drawings by Janos Fodor, book includes CD edition with music by Maciek Sienkiewicz, Collegium Heleveticum, Zuerich
No 14, Collegium Heleveticum, ETH Zurich, p. 21 – 25

2001
Aren’t you going to expose me? Text Adam Szymczyk, Exhibition catalogue Zawody Malarskie /
Painters’ Competition, exh. cat. Galeria Bielska, Bielsko-Biała

February 5 – March 12, 2011

Clifton Benevento is pleased to announce Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves, a solo exhibition of Polish artist Agnieszka Brzezanska. Running simultaneously with 852 Hz, a solo-exhibition at Michael Benevento (Los Angeles), Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves, presents an array of photographs and paintings addressing interweaving concerns of the female body, movement, rhythm and the moments when issues of abstraction ground spiritual ideas.

Inspired by the interlaced philosophies of spirituality and unhindered movement emphasized by the foremothers of Modern Dance, the exhibition derives its title from a statement by Isadora Duncan: “dance waves sound waves light waves-all the same,” suggesting aesthetic parallels between the rhythms of nature and those of the dancer that contrast starkly with the ideologies of movement informing ballet.

Using free-form movement as an aesthetic and critical dock, a significant portion of Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves involves a series of inkjet on cotton paper prints in which images of iconic female dancers including Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan are eloquently overlaid with abstract drawings.

In Untitled (Loie Fuller), for example, a black and white photograph of Loie Fuller dancing on a stage is obscured by a series of organic, geometric arcs that aggregate to form shapes and clouds that in turn surround the dancer. Mediating, meditating, obscuring and accentuating a focus on histories of movement eroticized, the tension in Brzezanska’s images also stems from investigations of abstraction and figuration.

The cloud-like forms appearing in some of the artist’s combined images turn into orbs – the circles of light caused by a camera’s flash intercepting tiny airborne particles that some have theorized to be connections to the spirit world – in others. Appearing in a series of Brzezanska’s photographs of sunsets and circling the heads of dancers, the orb-photographs extend the artist’s interest in the formal constructions of the spiritual.

Noting conceptual precedents in Hilma af Klint, Agnes Martin and Emma Kunz, Brzezanska’s practice pushes matches in movement across mediums. Channeling a turn of the 20th century notion of the body as a site for the multi-disciplined integration of discourses on science, nature, art and metaphysics, Brzezanska’s new paintings incorporate the formal use of the cloud and the orb again: dots evolve into a series of specks and arcs that wisp across her canvases with a natural grace evocative of the ways in which clothing may be moved by the wind.

Ann Daly, a dance historian, describes the view of the body during this period as a “meeting ground, where discourses of science, nature, art, and metaphysics were happy to find themselves not-so-distant relations.”5 Francois Delsarte is a prime example of this multidisciplinary integration that Daly depicts. Delsarte believed “that from harnessing the powers ‘of body and spirit, results the intimate fusion of art and science, which, though each one is born of a different source, nevertheless ally interpenetrate and reciprocally prove each other.'”

Born in Gdansk, Poland, Agnieszka Brzezanska lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw. Her work has been shown internationally, including solo exhibitions at Kusthaus Baselland (Basel), DAAD Gallery (Berlin), Hotel (London), Karma International (Zurich) and Galerie Kamm (Berlin).

Christopher Knight, “Art review: Agnieszka Brzezanska at Michael Benevento Gallery”. L.A. Times. February 17, 2011.
PDF OF REVIEW

Nana Asafour, “Review: Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves”. Time Out New York. February 15, 2011.
PDF OF REVIEW

Quinn Latimer, “Agnieszka Brzezanska, Karma International”. FRIEZE. Issue 127. Nov-Dec 2009.
PDF OF REVIEW

Sam Thorne, “Agnieszka Brzezanska, Hotel”. FRIEZE. Issue 105. March 2007.
PDF OF REVIEW