Magdalena Karpińska
Lasting Things
For Magdalena Karpińska the past is now, just further. The poetics which she uses; the aesthetics of yellowed photographs, old paintings and hand-written memoirs, do not belong to some "something, somewhere," but are thoroughly contemporary. Thus, in her paintings there are numerous references to motives known only by her family, inherent in the personal history of her family, present in the photos of the private albums. Hence the titles of the exhibitions, which are quotes from diaries or from the publications of her ancestors.
Karpińska’s paintings were created using the labor-intensive technique of egg tempera, popular before the discovery of oil painting. Instead of using ready paint, based on artificial emulsion, the artist herself grates yolk with pigment. Early renaissance painting theorist Cennino Cennini taught: "If you put a thick layer of tempera, the paint will quickly crack and break off the wall," hence the reason why Karpińska chisels each image thoroughly, by putting more than two coats of paint on daily, while simultaneously working on several canvases. The most important thing for her is materiality, objectivity, and the durability of the work. As she says: "Precisely in this, the subject differs from the idea – requiring the bearing of responsibility for a particular decision. There are so many brilliant ideas, that I can not keep up with them in delight."
