UNIMAGINABLE YET POSSIBLE. A PRIVATE CONVERSATION

A conversation with Joanna Wos.

Kind, cutting, female, male, ethereal, erotic.

In celestial works she describes brutality.

She moves between violent representation and indissoluble lightness.

Her fluid and elegant line represents bodies that inhabit the space of a pain that seems to define specific roles in a game between victim and predator.

Q: We talked for over an hour and a half and in our pleasant conversation I think it is important to start from a feeling. How important was the urgency to begin for you?

J: Making art is unquestionably a very urgent matter for me.

It was the need to find myself, to work with my feelings, elaborating things that happened to me in the past as well as elaborating emotions and trying to achieve an interpretation, in a certain sense. At first I painted

convulsively and unceasingly, I was byreprodustive, I had a lot of things inside me that I needed to express.

Now it's different. I've matured a process that up to now is certainly better organized. It was as if I had to shape my own world, through my memory and my imagination. Find specific moments over the course of my life and elaborate them visually, making them a part of my practice.

Q: When did you actually start painting? When did you realize you could transform what was inside you into works and think of yourself as an artist? Is it something you wanted as a child or something that you realized later in life?

J: I started painting very late, after I got my degree in architecture in my native country, Poland. I soon realized that architecture was not the right path for me: I couldn't find within that structure the integrity and

the means to express myself fully, my thoughts, my feelings, which drove me to seek a different means. As concerns painting it was more of a feeling than a carefully thought out decision. Back then I naively

thought it was that or nothing. I was in Poland at the time, then I decided to study abroad, enrolling at the university. A friend of mine had suggested that I enroll at the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna. Maybe it wasn't

exactly what I was looking for, but I applied a few days before the deadline and they accepted me.

Q: What is the art scene in Vienna like as compared with Poland? And is it a place where you find positive inspiration for your works?

J: It's hard for me to make that kind of comparison, comparing a very rich capital to a country that is less rich.

Vienna offers a significantly broader cultural experience, boasting of a lively art scene that includes numerous museums, institutions, galleries, and non-mainstream spaces, thereby resulting in the creation of more opportunities for artists. I don't find Vienna to be particularly stimulating per se, but I do undeniably appreciate the comfort it has to offer and the relatively solid support system for artists, something that is not as obvious in Poland. I love being in the company of other artists and students, I have many interdisciplinary connections and I discuss artistic matters with them. In spite of this, I am attracted to Vienna's hedonistic and self-destructive side. In this sense I believe that Vienna helped me a lot to find the right way to express my vision.

Q: Do you think your architectural studies influenced your way of painting?

J: I don't see a particular architectural influence in my works, it is a subject that I feel to be distant from me, I believe I have an ambiguous relationship with architecture. In some ways I understand that, on the one

hand, it was something I started in the footsteps of my parents, who are both architects, but at the same time I feel that it is very distant from me. There was a greater need to give a voice to my emotions, to my mental and creative production, more to my visions, than working on volumes of something that is tangible and real.

I needed to make what I was inside come out by working on my subconscious.

Q: Can you please give us more context about how you start a new work? What process do you follow? Is it more of an instinctive process in which you paint directly on the canvas or do you make a preparatory study?

J: My process usually begins with research: I collect photos, pornographic images, and historical paintings. I redeem the imaginary world from both history and the contemporary world. Some human activities have no

social and temporal differences. They just happen. Once I have a good general sense of the direction I'm moving in, I try to combine or group different images that have certain points in common, for instance, a

Christian representation of the Renaissance with a contemporary porn image. This process is rather intuitive and in this phase I can't always discern a clear rationale for my choices. The process is rather chaotic and I often start drawing on canvas without knowing where I'm going, all I have

is a fragmentary idea. This makes everything more exciting and it often leads to unpredictable results, even though it also often contributes to failure, which is an essential part of the process as well. I prefer to follow

the sensation or the conviction that something is unique (according to my meaning for it, of course) and that it is worth exploring. As the work develops my instinct takes the upper hand and the understanding of the

artwork is something that usually arrives later to close the circle of the complete development.

Q: Going into more detail as concerns your art, one art critic said that you "dance on the border between permission and taboo": do you agree with these words? If you could describe it, what would be the leitmotif

of your poetics?

J: I like the idea of testing what is socially acceptable, what is allowed, and what might be considered too obscene. I am definitely putting those limits to the test, which are, in a certain sense, the limits I experience

that I can share with the viewer. I often recycle the ideas of painters from different generations, or I imply specific historical motifs: what was at one time obscene or permitted does not necessarily have the same

status and power today. If you look to the past, for instance, art was a sphere dominated by men, where artists often portrayed female nudes. I like the opposition between these elements and the different representation of the female nudes.

Q: In 2022 you had a very intense solo show at Gray Nielsen in Vienna: the title of the show was "Precious and Tender": I think the title encompasses a lot of what your poetic is, right?

J: The central inspiration of the exhibition was "The Romance of the Rose," a medieval poem that seeks to reveal the art of romantic love, containing rather violent ideas in this regard. The title was an attempt to

describe the concept of love and to create an expression of absolute opposition to what was represented in the poem and in my paintings. Filled with sexual symbolism as related to the rose and with misogynistic

violence, the poem was one of the first examples of chivalric romanticism and the dramatization of amorous relations. A sort of love portrait in a very brutal way, which shows how different love can be and what it

means. The title sought to describe this notion of love somehow, as something that needs to be protected because it is very precious and tender. I wanted to create a sort of conflict between the title and what was

being revealed in the paintings, which in the end is very much in keeping with human desperation for love, how it can end in something that is completely the opposite or very brutal, like distraction.

Q: Most of your works are untitled. Why is that?

J: Usually, I feel I can't give my works a satisfying title, one that is descriptive of the contents or connotative.

I fear this can limit the reading of my paintings and their complexity. I don't want to stress anything in particular, I prefer to leave the viewer with every opportunity to read and interiorize my painting with their feelings and emotions.

Q: One image that is repeated is your self-portrait in different positions, sometimes powerful ones, other times weaker or overwhelming. Whatever the case may be, in all these depictions your figure plays a pivotal role. Can you please describe the narrative behind all this?

J: l often use my body as a means to represent one of the protagonists of my paintings.

Some works are obviously personal, but it's something that is linked more to the desire to play with my body, simply an instrument with which to play. It's an imaginary creation: a sort of avatar. Using my self-portrait as an avatar could be read in different ways: on the one hand, it is the means to avoid

pain for anyone else in such brutal and violent scenes. Besides this, the management of my self-portrait can be read as also being masochistic, as most of the scenes portrayed are rather violent.

Q: Many of your paintings also include dreamlike moments with ghosts, figures, and overlapping elements. This leads to different levels in the work of art, where the figures are at the same time hidden/transparent or

in the foreground. In any case, the viewer's impression is that all the figures are the protagonists of the scene in different ways. What does this mean? How did you get the idea to use transparent figures in your paintings?

J: I don't want to specify whether the elements and the figures belong to a single scene, or whether some, for instance, are a visual representation of thinking. The overlapping levels are an attempt to visually represent the complexity of specific topics.

Q: Is there one piece you regret having created? Or that you feel is too far-removed from your current expression?

J: I might regret having shown them, but never having created them. Even though often it's rather difficult for me to accept my failures. I am still going through a process of learning, evolution, and change. Nowadays,

an artist should show his works to the public when they are "perfect" products, so it's hard for me to show some of my first works, when I was just getting started with my exploration. My first paintings were definitely

far-removed from my current expression, but the subjects I deal with are more or less the same ones.

Q: As mentioned before, notwithstanding your young age, you are an artist who is represented by major galleries, both in Vienna and Warsaw. How did you manage this interest on the part of the art circuit? How do you manage the expectations?

J: I still see myself as being at the beginning of my practice, in search of new ideas and inspirations.

Naturally, there are expectations on the part of the artistic circuit, some rules that an artist must follow to be able to develop their career, specific steps that have to be achieved in a certain amount of time, etc. But think that most of the expectations are born directly from me. I am aware that most expectations are perhaps a creation of my mind as if I were the prisoner of these thoughts; there are so many emotions involved during my artistic process, including many personal things in my life. So I would simply say that I don't manage the interests and the expectations well. The feeling of wanting to isolate and hide grows.

Q: How is your practice evolving? Are you working on any new projects now? New shows?

J: Right now l'm preparing a solo show with the Westwood gallery in New York that will open in December.

I'm working on expanding my repertoire, an ensemble of references and inspirations.

Q: Do you think you're going to continue to focus on painting, or would you like to try out other "media" in the future? I ask this question because in your works the scene is dominated by movements and different layers, in a certain sense like the scenes in a movie.

J: I would definitely try to expand my practice to other means, I find this idea to be exciting. In particular, I can imagine expanding in the direction of sculpture or installation.

Q: Are there are periods during the year when you interrupt production and focus on yourself, your research?

J: I have very intense periods when I produce a lot, where I feel that I have completely exhausted all my resources and I need a few weeks or even months to recuperate. At the same time, I have this constant and

at times overwhelming feeling that I should continue to work on new paintings, but I think that this has to do more with the capitalist notion of productivity.

Q: What makes your heart lighter, what makes you feel good and gives you energy?

J: Definitely, when I finish a workl feel emptied out, as I was telling you. However swimming in the Danube reactivates my energy to get back in balance. A strong restart energy is instead more down to earth, long bike rides, going out on the streets and moving ahead.