An interview taken from our April digital issue. Between Us is the latest artistic project by Daria Pietryka, born in 1983, a Wroclaw-based painter, architect, interior and exhibition set designer. The subject of the show is human relations – abroad, multilayered and dynamic issue. Humans as social beings are entangled in a network of micro and macro relationships – with themselves, with others, with the surrounding world.
The relation itself is treated as a process because our relationships are dynamic, they change, evolve, require work, sacrifice and attention. Neglected they get complicated or simply end. Pietryka carefully observes herself in the world, collects experiences, notes observations, questions and problems, and examines the emotions accompanying them. From that very moment, images begin to appear in her head. It all starts with an experience, an observation and a feeling. Then it’s the time for reflection and sketches. Finishing paintings takes a lot of time and work, the artist changes them many times, applies subsequent layers of paint, interferes with the canvas with thread, sand, colour, builds a multilayer structure. Thus, another protagonist of the exhibition is painting itself, both in the context of skill and craft, but also as a form of complex narration.
Daria designs interiors and architecture professionally. According to her, art is an inseparable element of architecture and design. She has been painting since she can remember and considers painting to be her first real passion.
For Daria, painting is a kind of meditation, a journey inside herself and another person. She paints what she cannot convey in words. Things that inspire her are life, experiences, places, travelling, books, and everyday life, which she does not consider dull or monotonous. Painting is her way of dealing with emotions and working out the world around her. It is closely connected to her thought process. In one of her interviews, she stated that she would have to stop thinking in order to stop painting.
In the series Between Us, Daria returns to the observation of herself and others and expands these thoughts by exploring the subject of our relations. Between Us is not an autobiographical exhibition, but it naturally draws on everyday life, which presents us with a great variety of themes: being a person in the world, in a community, in the family, in motherhood, in relationships, in friendships and with oneself, and finally – being a woman in the aforementioned universe. There is also a subtle thread of our relationship with nature – we are part of the natural world and we need to connect with it, but entangled in modernity we often forget about it. In her paintings, Daria takes on these subjects and the emotions associated with them and celebrates the process, both in the context of human experience in the world and of her painting craft.
She portraits love stories of a couple, which strike the viewer with a sober look and maturity. The artist gives up idealized visions in favour of an honest celebration of love as an art of choice, compromise, working on oneself and with one another, accepting flaws or limitations of one’s own and of others. Each love relationship is governed by its own rhythm, we attract and disgust each other, we set and push the boundaries, sometimes we live with each other and sometimes next to each other, waves of passion come and go. In such a dynamic scenery you have to be an alert observer and a participant at the same time.
Contact
Instagram: @dariapietryka_atelier
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