“Chyba to jest niepewność” (“‘I think’ means uncertainty”), the title of the exhibition, is a fragment of the sentence uttered a few years ago by my daughter. My ambiguous answer to an earlier question was summed up by her words, which seemed to me at the time to be overly insightful, surprised me with their accuracy and deep meaning, with anxiety discreetly embedded in them. The whole construct of “‘I think’? ‘I think’ means uncertainty.’” was written down by me in a notebook and became the slogan on which the idea of the whole exhibition presented at the Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz and this publication was based.
Monika Rak (text from catalogue)
In the works of Monika Rak, we do not see the reverse, but we know it is there. Despite the difficult subject that is touched upon, the artist remains in a safe place and calmly talks about the situation that uncertainty throws us into. Emanating luminosity, the patterns on the canvases are beautifully dangerous. They inspire awe and admiration, while causing that heart-piercing ache of the unknown.
Agnieszka Gorzaniak (text from catalogue)
An answer which begins with the word “I think,” can open up vast expanses of doubt, pull down storm clouds of anxiety over our heads, but also leave open the possibility of what we call in cinema a “happy ending.”
So ambiguous, contemplative and open to vast fields of interpretation is the new exhibition by Monika Rak. There is in it a kind of praise for the state of uncertainty, the joy of posing questions that are sometimes more important than answers. There is in it a tacit acquiescence to stopping between curiosity and knowledge, the graspable and the elusive, and an agreement to the absence of rigid rules and schemes, to a kind of disorder and understatement.
Bogna Błażewicz (text from catalogue)
Monika Rak is a Doctor of Fine Arts, an artist working in the field of textiles and drawing. In her work, she combines embroidery and drawing sewn with thread, building realizations based on drawing visual qualities. In her doctoral dissertation, “Drawing Constructs. In Search of Visual Methods of Analysing the Reality” she attempted to define her own visual category named drawing construct, based on the linear analysis of reality (2014). She is a graduate of the doctoral program in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (2014). She graduated with honours in Drawing Media from the Faculty of Art Education in Visual Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (2010). She is the winner of the first prize in the POLYGONUM 4 (2016) Competition of the Artists of the Kujawsko-Pomorski District organized by the Municipal Art Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz and has twice received the Art Scholarship of the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship (2013, 2022). For many years she has fulfilled herself as a lecturer, and her teaching record includes cooperation with such universities as School of Form SWPS University in Poznań, WSB Merito University in Toruń and Bydgoszcz, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and others. She has presented her works in dozens of exhibitions and art events at home and abroad (England, Germany, Czech Republic, Portugal, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Romania), of which more than thirty were realized after her doctorate.
Curator – Agnieszka Gorzaniak
07.11.2023 – 14.01.2024
Gdańska 20
