Review: Justyna Adamczyk/EC Gallery

Justyna’a Adamczyk’s “New Paintings” is a taut, elegant show of eight roughly similar paintings from 2009. They are all the same size, 23.5 by 27.5 inches, and the same material, washed-out acrylic on linen. They all embrace white space and, at their best, simplicity. They also seem to represent a journey, taken clockwise around the gallery, of an artist discovering and developing her strength. “Sztukas” is the title of the first work, which is an apparently untranslatable Polish word meaning… “something untranslatable.” An opaque white cloud—noteworthy for the absence of opaque forms—rains down a tangle of vines that might festoon a ceramic tile or a teapot, engendering an initial fear that the work is too decorative, too crafty; a fear that is then gradually dismissed. By painting the final painting, “Seriously…,” any sign of the stiff knick-knackery is gone, replaced by two dark washes of varying opacity. A large blob reads as a torso. A second, thicker blob is an ominous, even brutal shape, like a bird pecking out the eyes of a dead man or thoughts forcibly escaping the brain and turning into a comic thought-bubble, mocking and cruel. In between these two extremes is the transition, with each work selectively adding and subtracting elements, searching for the best fit. Cutesy lipstick puckers and seashells are first allowed to exist alone, before being met with threats of violence. The tchotchkes then disappear altogether, but for the remnant bloody splash, and finally a vague remembrance. Adamczyk’s process hones the work to its finest point of expression, leaving me with hopes of the next works to come. (Erik Wennermark)

Through February 13 at EC Gallery, 215 N. Aberdeen

Views of America, views from Poland

Justyna Adamczyk at EC Gallery

By Lauren Viera, Tribune reporter

February 5, 2010

There's nothing quite as refreshing as stumbling upon the work of a bright, young artist who's never before been exhibited in the U.S., especially with perfectly cheery images that offer an instant antidote to a subfreezing, snow-blistered afternoon.

This small collection of new works of Polish painter Justyna Adamczyk is all light and breathy and free, achieved in both her straightforward use of simple materials (acrylic paints; ecru, thinly bound linen canvases) and the lightness of her hand. There is color — sometimes quite a bit, sometimes rather faint — but mostly, there is whitespace, and with it, room for the images to breathe.

Most of Adamczyk's paintings are fantastically abstract, but a handful look like ghostly portraits. "Pale" (2009) is all lipstick: the double-blot of candy-colored lips that practically float in the middle of the canvas look almost as if Adamczyk herself might have leaned forward and planted them there. "Sztukas" (2009) is the most illustrative of the eight on display here. Poufy clouds are painted on an aqua-blue sky just big enough to hold them; below is a lovely, jellyfish-like mess of neatly painted vines and curlicues.

There are visible pencil strokes on several of these canvases, which at first I wrote off to sloppiness, but they come into play in works like "Seriously …" (2009), the starkest of the lot. There's a bare silhouette of gray with a thought-bubble burst of black above, seeping into this ghost-figure's brain. Below, hundreds of tiny, penciled-in exes begin to form the torso. It's intriguing, to be sure, and beautiful.

Justyna Adamczyk at EC Gallery, 215 N. Aberdeen St., 312-850-0924; ec-gallery.com; through Feb. 13

lviera@tribune.com