SYNTHETIC POTENTIALITY AND ACTUALITY from the exhibition “Paravent” curated by Hannah Beck-Mannagetta at Hilbertraum in Berlin, 2018

Hybridity seems to be an essential prerequisite of our contemporary era. Therefore, the union and mixture of different domains and dimensions appear as triggering incentives also for artistic creation. Agnieszka Szostek, with her practice centred on the current human condition, turns these assumptions into fundamental assets, both in aesthetic and conceptual terms. In her works, in fact, slimy elements belonging to the digital world are found alongside materials that evoke the organic sphere through their fleshy connotations. The skin is rendered as a translucent plastic surface and attentively installed together with screens or metal components that remind us of hypertext links that have transcended the screen. The natural and the artificial are thus merged, and their contradictions give rise to a dialogue that is both poetic and engaged to current global issues.

Would you like to introduce your artistic practice and illustrate the core threads of your research?

My practice blends homemade printing techniques, a tender mix of artificial and natural elements, collages blurring off and online aesthetics. The materials I’m using are sophisticated, although close to humans. Recalling the feeling of identity or loss of it.

What are your primary sources of inspiration when creating and conceiving your works?

My source of inspiration is basically the contemporary human condition. The feeling of anxiety and guilt for the collapse of it. Post-internet culture filtered through the lens of a woman, artist, mother and worker.

How do you select the materials, and what meaning, sense or feeling do you wish to convey through your aesthetic choice?

I feel related to poetic but contradictory and, at the same time, ironic ways of using materials that are related to me and that belong to my generation. The aesthetic of my works appears to me as if my pieces slide out of the screen.

TRANSMUTATION (series) - A CLOSE SIMILARITY OR AFFINITY, 2018

What is the piece you realised so far that best embodies your vision as an artist?

It is a difficult question. But if I have to choose one, I'd choose the work titled “Fashionista” from 2020-2021. It is a work that doesn’t really embody a vision of myself as an artist, but it implicates the current state. It’s a suit with a print of pollution coming from the coal-fired power station area in Poland. On top is real animal fur.

UNDERBELLY (series) 2020 - A Californian Plumber

What about your upcoming projects? What are you focusing on at the moment?

I’m happy to have future projects ahead. I’ve just finished the first co-curatorial project in a new space that I’m co-owning with my husband — and thinking of having a next one. I’m also expecting transformations in my work due to my new reality since I went through significant changes in my personal life. But also because I feel we are developing, as a society, a greater consciousness about sustainability and a higher level of responsibility for our own trace.