Faithfully Represented

Michael Werner Gallery, Athens is pleased to present Faithfully Represented, an exhibition of new paintings by Poland-born, London-based painter Barbara Wesołowska (b. 1984 in Wrocław, Poland).

Faithfully Represented, both the title of the exhibition and a painting in the show, are words plucked from the middle of a sentence in Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. The two words are not particularly loaded in the text but were chosen by the artist because of their discord. Wesołowska feels that the word faithfully describes an effort to capture something intangible, while represented is the arrival at a contemporary object of devotion.

Wesołowska was raised in Poland in a religious family, and, as a child, spent a great deal of time in Polish Gothic churches surrounded by images of the Madonna and saints. These early memories shape her painting practice. Guided by intuition and chance, Wesołowska’s ritualistic process involves spilling, layering, and rubbing oil on linen. She often includes other materials in her work, such as gold leaf, even if it is completely obfuscated by paint. Like historical religious icons, Wesołowska conjures an atmosphere or a presence, taking the impalpable, ethereal, and transcendental and making it tangible.