Monika Misztal
born 1986
Monika Misztal graduated from the Faculty of Painting of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. She creates oil paintings that are an emanation of carnal, sensual energy, but also the abject. The artist uses an intensive palette of colours, and creates dense, sometimes raw and aggressive compositions rife with surprising textures. Her works are often grouped into cycles, in which she tests both figurative and abstract boundaries of representation of states such as hunger, shame, and repulsion. Misztal’s paintings presented at the exhibition come from a series, in which, using bold figuration, she depicts porn actresses in various states of pleasure and rapture. Women's faces tightly fill the picture frame, depriving the viewer of the context of a sexual performance. The painter focuses on the facial expressions and emotions of the performers, blurring the border between the authentic and the studied.
