Born on 5th February 1976 in Warsaw. Studied at the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw between 1996 and 2001, finished with a degree in painting. Lives and works in Warsaw, collaborates with Raster Gallery.
Agata Bogacka's thesis consisted of a series of paintings that were variations on known works from art history, such as The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia by Édouard Manet. The characters in Bogacka's paintings are her peers: they use mobile phones, Marat has dreadlocks, and on Olympia's body you can see marks left by a bathing suit.
Bogacka's thesis paintings demonstrated an expressive and original style, which is characteristic of the artist's technique. She uses oil on canvas, creating flat spots of colour with a strong, graphic outline in front of a usually homogenous background. Her paintings are synthetic and poster-like; the artist uses a limited range of colours, among which shades of grey are dominant. The highly stylised form is used to construct complex inventive narratives, which refer to the artist's own life. The composition of the paintings is carefully thought out, devoid of any unnecessary details.Prior to painting, Bogacka organises photo shoots with models, who are usually close relatives, friends or people with whom she has had or still has an emotional bond.
Bogacka's paintings are seemingly a chronicle of banal events occurring in a person’s private, social life. However, an attentive viewer will notice that each image resembles a rebus puzzle, which helps you find a ‘key’that then allows you to read the hidden reflection or commentary constituting the author's ironic, sometimes emotionally bitter self-portrait. The heroine of many of Bogacka's works is a young girl, the artist's stand-in.
Agata Bogacka's autobiographic or even narcissistic work tells the story of a girl from a big city and her complicated emotional, erotic and social relationships, characterised by superficiality and coldness. The persistently recurring motif of Bogacka's paintings is a desire to establish a close bond with other people and create successful relationships, which in reality turns out to be impossible.
At the Rzeczywiście, Młodzi Są Realistami (The Young Are Realists, Really) exhibition Bogacka presented a series of four paintings entitled Agata 2001. One featured the artist's self-portrait:a naked woman lying with a mobile phone in hand,while the other three canvases depicted naked men. The male nudes are Bogacka's partners with whom she was emotionally involved in the year 2001. This very intimate relationship that Bogacka shares with the viewer is not an optimistic story; it deals with loneliness, distance and disappointment.
Bogacka's individual exhibition Ja Krwawię! (I'm Bleeding, 20013) at the Ujazdowski Castle – Centre for Contemporary Art consisted of 16 paintings created in the previous two years. All canvases combined autobiographical themes, sometimes bordering on exhibitionism. Bogacka pictured herself, but not as a melancholic person disappointed in subsequent unsuccessful relationships. Instead she was a woman aware of her attractiveness, who addresses herself through body and physiology. The eponymous blood is a symbol of life, and the statement ‘I'm bleeding!’simply means ‘I'm alive!’.