The “Drugs for Fears” exhibition is the result of a series of individual activities-experiments that oscillate around illustration in the broad sense of the word. These ‘play-objects’, diverse in scale and form, and their creation, coincided with a period of anxiety, crisis and distress. Weaving a colourful narrative through its playful, often infantile components, the exhibition is not, however, a depiction of fear, but rather a conversation with it. A combination of strange, often naive forms, half figurative and common, half abstract and fantastic, is an attempt to depict the emotional underbelly of everyday life, becoming at the same time a relief for it. Seeking a creative counterbalance to what is disturbing and frightening, she wants to play and invite you to play.
Agata Królak, born in 1987 in Gdańsk; illustrator, designer, visual artist, assistant lecturer in the Illustration Studio of Prof. Jadwiga Okrassa at the Graphics department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Author of illustrated and picture books: Myśli Teo, Piękno Teo, Brzdęk! Skąd się bierze dźwięk, Ciasta, ciastka i takie tam, Z działki, z lasu i takie tam, Czujemisie, Masło Śpi, Wytwórnik domowy, Wytwórnik Kosmiczny, Skrytki, Las Zabaw. Winner of the MUST HAVE plebiscite of the Łódź Design Festival, KTR award, distinctions of the Polish Design Awards, IBBY and the Polish Association of Book Publishers. Her illustrations have been presented at festivals and exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, London, Brussels and Paris, among others. Scholarship holder of the NCK “Young Poland” programme in 2016. In 2018, she defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Talking with images. The picture book and the development of visual language.

5.02.2021 – 27.03.2021
3 Gdańska St.
curator: Karolina Rybka