Following in the footsteps of New York galleries from lower Manhattan, Tamara Berdowska’s op-art geometric abstractions were presented in the post-industrial space of an old porcelain factory in Ćmielów. Preparations for the exhibition took more than two years. The exhibition showcased dozens of works prepared especially for the event, including the most characteristic works from the ‘Insomnia’ series. In the halls of the former porcelain painter’s shop, art lovers can also see recently popular spatial objects and drawings. These were exhibited last year in Berlin at Van Rij Gallery’s booth during the Art Position Art Fair, where they delighted the Berlin public. The curator of the exhibition, Katarzyna Rij, also showed older works by Tamara Berdowska from the collection of the Art and Design LT Foundation, which organises the event, as well as from private collections from home and abroad.

What are Berdowska’s paintings like?
Tamara Berdowska’s works do not describe reality, only indirectly drawing inspiration from the surrounding world. Her mesmerising works, in which the artist’s imagination plays the most important role, are her own painterly record of her feelings and thoughts. Berdowska’s geometric abstractions, which are not based on purely mathematical calculations, are created as intuitive ‘projections of her mind’ captured a moment before falling asleep. They are born on the border between dream and reality. The creative process itself, as the artist emphasises, is a kind of trance, a mantra of rhythmically repeated geometric forms that detaches us from reality.

Tamara Berdowska was born in Rzeszów and she graduated from the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Professor Janina Kraupe-Świderska. She is the winner of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation scholarship. Her works are in one of the largest collections of abstract art belonging to the German collector Grauwinkel Siegfried, are part of the Peter C. Ruppert Collection at the Museum im Kulturspeicher in Würzburg, and belong to Polish, foreign and museum collections.

She has always known that she wanted to devote herself to art. Privately, her great love, apart from art, is animals. When she is not painting, she spends her time with them… with small breaks for punk concerts. With her husband, also an artist, who is working in sculpture, she creates a unique home full of love for animals. She talks about her life full of eccentric experiences and excitement as a passionate creator who has found a way of life in art. After years of hard work, Tamara Berdowska has gained recognition internationally, where today her works are among the most sought-after among non-figurative works. Success has not changed her approach to life. Only that the queue of those waiting to see her works is long and the works at auction are breaking new records.

Curator of the exhibition: Katarzyna Rij
Exhibition coordinator: Gabriela Wrona

Organisers and partners of the exhibition:

Van Rij Gallery, Art and Design Lubomir Tomaszewski Foundation

Honorary Patron:

Marshal of the Świetokrzyskie Voivodeship

Patronage:

Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków

Media patrons: Artinfo, Contemporary Lynx, RMF Classic, Glamour, Art Monitor, AS Ćmielów porcelain factory, Viva!, Fragile, Presto, Niezła Sztuka, Label, Wyborcza.pl, Elle Decoration, Rynek i Sztuka