Three p.m., the day is about to end, its potentially most effective hours. As often happens when I don’t have to earn money, I spent the time, since I could, reading, napping, petting animals, eating, even though there were, and are, other more important things to do – a bit like waiting until the ‘official part’ was over, after which I could give myself a dispensation and get on with the fun stuff that nobody asks about, that nobody is interested in, that nobody has to explain to anybody. Because, after all, it is not, as has become accepted, any more important than what makes up the obligatory core, the clue of the day, it must-do: work, conversation, shopping, sleep.
These hours, when everyone is working or at school, I deliberately ‘waste,’ as if I’m staring at the time of the world sifting for absolutely nothing through the throat of the hourglass. I do it out of spite, not really sure who, and even when I come to be (compulsively) busy with something at the time, I encounter obstacles at every turn that slow me down and discourage me, STOP signs.
You could say that the most important thing for me is what is not compulsory – and yet I stick to the timetable that school and then work have taught me, and I obey it, constantly in a mode of attentiveness and subsequent rest, even though, after all, nothing realistically holds me to that timetable any more. That is why what is most important to me – my creative expression – is still stuck in the ‘not necessary’ category and waits every day for the moment when no one is looking to come into the light and start happening, to unfold like a shy flower, to stealthily catch the end of the afternoon.
I have a suspicion that, in a sense, non-necessity is a condition for the existence of the important – that if the important were to be ‘made necessary’, it would then lose its raison d’être. This is why my painting happens in this way and not in any other way.
16.01.2024, a notepad entry, Alicja Kubicka
Alicja Kubicka (born 1993 in Bydgoszcz) – graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (2017, painting). From 2016–2019, she was a resident of the Artists’ Colony in Gdańsk. Author of solo exhibitions, including at the State Art Gallery in Sopot (Pospieszny odwrót [Hasty Retreat], 2022), Pani Domu gallery in Poznań (Szczere pole [In the Middle of Nowhere], 2022) and Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz (Zestaw malarski [Painter’s set], 2018). She has participated in collective events such as: Survival Art Review (Wrocław, 2023), Bad romance exhibition (Rondo Sztuki, Katowice, 2023), Gdańsk Biennial of Art (Municipal Gallery in Gdańsk, 2021), 13th Eugeniusz Geppert Competition (BWA in Wrocław, 2020) and Komunikacja ze wszystkim co jest (Communication with all that is, Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warszawa, 2018).
In her spare time, she enjoys road cycling, yoga and rock climbing.
www.alicjakubicka.com
curator: Karolina Rybka
Start 07.05.2024, 6 pm
3 Gdańska St.
End 15.06.2024
