From April 13 to June 20, 2021, at the Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz, an exhibition of paintings by Magdalena Rucińska will be open under the title Interspace.
Here is a house. Here is a man. Here is a hand. A simple image. The figure and the background. Something obvious. In verbal translation, the image is as indicative and concise as a sentence in an old primer. At this point, however, an association with the insidiousness of Magritte’s paintings comes to mind almost automatically. And things start to get complicated. Painting is not governed by rules similar to language. It is neither a collection of characters nor a vocabulary. If perspective is discarded, there is no linear sequentiality, no definite rules of succession. The figure and the background are connected by a constant relation of inversion. The essence of the painting is interspace – a silent, semantically empty field. Ambiguity. A place to which it is difficult to ascribe a clear linguistic sense, but which is essential for the articulation of the visual sense. For, according to Gottfried Boehm, the latter “[…] articulates itself against the background of the unspeakable.” This silent, empty space is, therefore, contrary to appearances, dense – full of correlations, contrasts, transitions. It is an emptiness that is not nothing. And since my paintings are dominated by frugality – amor vacui, this positive view of the unfilled/undefined areas of the canvas is extremely close to my heart. Despite my aspirations for quasi-narrative – the use of ‘legible’, symbolic, graphic elements – I am far from creating rebuses with a priori solutions or stories developing in a horizontal direction. And the visual interspace allows precisely the movement in different directions. An immersion whose goal is neither the horizon nor an abstract meeting point. Due to the interspace, the painterly compositions are not frontal, façade-like, closed. It can also decide the relationships between different images. Make them connected by threads that are not only semantic. And since we are already talking about semantics, I would also like to see in the title interspace the reflection of my search related to identity, memory and narration. To space and time in a broad sense. To home. Therefore, the exhibition will feature works related to this theme, including those from my doctoral series “Gained at Home” (“Initial Parts,” “Unbosoming,” “Non-Places”) and new paintings from my “Tender Places” series. Images concise in form. Understated in colour. Intimate, reserved, silent.
Magda Rucińska

Magda Rucińska – illustrator, painter, author of texts on art, comics and illustration. Published, among others, in “Lampa,” “Zwykłe Życie,” “Fabularie,” “Zeszyty Komiksowe,” “F5.” She has had several individual exhibitions, e.g. at the Galeria Wspólna and the Wieża Ciśnień Gallery in Bydgoszcz, Cheap East Comics Gallery (CK Zamek) in Poznań, Municipal Gallery in Inowrocław, as well as participation in group exhibitions at the Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz, MBWA Leszno, Bielsko BWA Gallery or Schloss Herzberg am Harz Museum in Germany. She has received scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2009/2010) and the President of Bydgoszcz (2016). Finalist of the Bielska Jesień Biennale (2017), awarded three times in the Leon Wyczółkowski National Painting Competition (2016, 2018, 2020). In 2018, in collaboration with Daniel Chmielewski, she created an illustrated book for children entitled “Miasto Złotej” (published by Tadam). In 2020, she defended her doctorate at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Her works can be found in the collections of the Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz and the Leon Wyczółkowski Regional Museum in Bydgoszcz.

curator: Danuta Pałys
13.04.2021 – 20.06.2021
20 Gdańska St.