04 Mar 2015

Magda Moskwa. Nomana / Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz

The retrospective exhibition of Magda Moskwa is a presentation of what constitutes one of the most original and consistent approaches to the medium of painting. The artist's works touch upon the subject of the body: from her early paintings, through characteristic women's portraits, to the latest, expressive 'corporal' reliefs and works which blur the line between painting and sculpture. Magda Moskwa's works, however, are not about representing the external, but about 'incarnation of the inner', as means to depict the layers of the psyche and the emotional states which are of interest to the artist.

The exhibition will present the most important paintings of the last twenty years, as well as photographs, installations and pieces of clothing as forms of mental overalls,. The exhibition will also present the full spectrum of Magda Moskwa's rich repertoire of techniques. Apart from the classic oil painting, the artist uses, among other things, substances used in gilding (mixtion) or resins (shellac). For some time now, the author has been developing her own painting technique, in which the substrate is a chalk plaster applied on a board in a relief-like fashion.

One characteristic subject tackled by Magda Moskwa are female portraits, whose frail bodily substance is marked with stigmas of rites of passage. The exhibition will also display a few male representations – a portrait from the collection of the Museum of Art, and a male nude in an interior. Apart from full body representations, images of fragments of bodies will be shown, depictions of hands.

The exhibition's retrospective character will allow finding telltale visual tracks, beginning from the early stage of her work, which viewers can follow as they reoccur and evolve in later works. They appear in the background of persons portrayed (floral motifs) or as pictorial characteristic traits embedded in the figures.

The recent years of the artist's work involved exploring the 'corporeality of the painting'. Just like the earlier, stifling shell-suits feature some incompleteness of form and fractures, so is the discontinued surface and indentures characteristic of later bodily haut-reliefs. Almost all paintings are only signed with the word 'Untitled'. The mysterious 'Nomana' is a coined word, which has made appearances in the titles of the artist's individual exhibitions for many years. The form, subject and terminology together make up a special, intimate pictorial universe of Magdalena Moskwa.

To date, the Museum of Art has presented works of Magda Moskwa in exhibitions such as Outside the Reality Principle. A Collection of 20th and 21st Century Art or Correspondences. Modern Art and Universalism. The works on display come from the artist's own collection, as well as collections of Galeria Opus, the Municipal Art Gallery in Lodz, private owners and the 20th and 21st century art collection in the Museum of Art.

Magda Moskwa studied in the Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) in Lodz. She has shown her works in monographic exhibitions, including those in: Galeria Opus in Lodz, the Visiting Gallery in Warsaw. Recently, her paintings were shown in exhibitions: „Co widać. Polska sztuka dzisiaj' (MSN)  and „Corpus' (Zachęta) in Warsaw. 

Curator: Maria Morzuch

Exhibition design: Magda Moskwa i Maria Morzuch