The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle invites you to Agata Bogacka's exhibition Equality Lack. This is another proposal from the series of presentations of the work of artists whose works are in the U-jazdowski collection.

Agata Bogacka is a painter, as well as an author of photographs, sculptures and drawings. Between 1996 and 2001, she studied at the Faculty of Graphics of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she defended her diploma with an annex in painting.

Equality Lack is a selection of a dozen paintings from recent years, including works painted especially for the exhibition.
Since 2016, the artist has been using the language of abstraction in her paintings. In her paintings, a particular tension between form, plane and painterly gesture is perceptible, where gradients, i.e. smooth tonal transitions, are decisive. The painting technique developed by Bogacka, or rather the system of actions on the surface of the canvas, plays a leading role in assigning meanings to the paintings and reading the content conveyed in them.

An analysis of the artist's way of painting her canvases allows us to decode their semantic potential, to draw attention to important problems that Bogacka addresses through abstract language: political events, social criticism, emancipation or feminist issues. The inequality in the exhibition's title is one of the themes invariably present in her paintings in recent years, a phenomenon that is still relevant and affects many groups of people. The gradient used by the artist signifies the blurring of boundaries, but also the erection of boundaries, which, in terms of meaning, evokes consensual or oppressive actions occurring in complex relationships between people, as well as in the space of politics or social relations. Bogacka's subtle or loud abstract paintings conceal real emotions, which are foreshadowed by the titles of her series of works, such as Relationships, Discord, Inequality, Declarations, Dependence, Divisions or Dream of Equality.

Painting is a living process for Bogacka, and a painting is a certain slice of this process. Regardless of the initially outlined concept, the final appearance of the painting is also influenced by external factors, on a micro and macro scale, from everyday matters to world situations.

An important role in Bogacka's technique and philosophy of creation is played by the phenomenon of pentimento, which refers to the painting over of traces of the artist's earlier decisions or mistakes in the process of creating a painting. Bogacka identifies pentimento with her way of thinking about painting as a process that can be visualised by revealing its stages and dynamics: she consciously incorporates the remnants of earlier layers, shapes or brush marks into the finished work.