The exhibition, entitled Alcina’s Island, comprises of two parts. The first part focuses on Dwurnik’s most recent paintings and drawings on paper, about a sorceress named Alcina – a fictional character created by Ludovico Ariosto in Orlando Furioso (1516). In Dwurnik’s works, sea monsters, jungle hybrids, tropical birds, tamed predators and animal-like plants surround and serve Alcina, a goddess and the queen of life and death. The second part of the show provides viewers with an opportunity to see some earlier paintings from Pola Dwurnik's prize-winning artbook Girl on Canvas, which will be also available in the gallery.
Pola Dwurnik (born in 1979 in Warsaw) is a Berlin-based visual artist who mainly works with oil paints, various drawing media, and collage. She has been recognized for her large-format realistic, yet very oneiric, oil paintings featuring various female characters. Dwurnik brought many of them together in her 2013 artbook Girl on Canvas, where they were accompanied by narrative stories and interpretations written by more than thirty authors.
The exhibition at the Galerie Idea-Fixa marks Pola Dwurnik’s return to the city of Basel. In 2004 and 2005, she was an artist-in-residence at the Stiftung Laurenz-Haus. In 2007, Christoph Merian Verlag published the booklet Living in Basel with Dwurnik’s cartoon-like drawings depicting the city and its inhabitants.
Pola Dwurnik
Alcina’s Island The exhibition runs: 13.02-11.04.2015
Galerie Idea-Fixa, Anina Michel & Reto Mettler
Feldbergstrasse 38
4057 Basel, Switzerland
http://www.idea-fixa.com GIRL ON CANVAS book presentation Thursday, 19.03.2015 at 7:30 pm
With the presence of the artist and the co-authors:
Andreas Blättler, Emilie Buri, Daniela Pfeil