Magda
Fokt
Artist from Warsaw, Poland
Encompassing time „Seed - the border between life and death“
For the Polish section of the international and itinerant exhibition „Seed Project“, the artists Alek Slon and Magda Fokt draw upon the challenges of our times, where the unleashed forces of nature turn against humankind after decades of exploitation. Thus, in the framework of the exhibition project „Seed“, they
convey a poetic dimension to the theme of sustainable development, which aims at contributing to the ongoing societal debates on how to tackle the challenges for humankind and our natural surroundings
alike. Theirs is not a position in the stricter sense of „political art“, but rather an abstracted view, taking into account mythology, history and psychology in order to lay bare the dynamics of our being in and confronting the world.
Magda Fokt's works presented at the exhibition are inspired by the artist's stay in Silesia. In compositions close to abstraction, we can find the shape of the rusty roof of a factory hall and mine shafts. The artist's fascination with the human will to live and shape the world is unquestionable, but her works can also be read as a memento: striving for total domination over nature means annihilating the human being who is part of it. Charred trunks symbolically recreated from papier mâché restore dignity and subjectivity to nature reduced to the role of raw material. The giant trees, once worshiped by man, stand burnt and empty. But even reduced this way, their transcendent dimension continues in the nurturing shape of the hollow formed by the trunk's shells: a refuge space or maybe a time capsule. Undoubtedly, time is the basic dimension of this spatial installation.
Bio / CV
She works with the use of oil painting techniques, acrylic, collage, relief on paper and canvas. Experiments with going beyond the boundaries of the canvas. She creates installations and objects in-spired by landscape, which is a starting point for her search within the realm of abstraction. Over the recent years, she has focused on a particular aspect of landscape where stones and water cla-sh. She pauses to reflect on the way they influence each other, searching for an analogy with human identity, which is affected by the external world. They are two different matters, two different worlds, which clash and at the same time exist in a symbiosis with each other. Varied matters, shapes, and roles they play in nature at the same time complete and exclude each other, which inspires the eternal game and fight. Regardless of the theme, Magda Fokt always has the question of human identity in mind.
Born in 1977. Visual artist based in Warsaw, Poland.
2001 Graduated with honors at Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (PL)
2018 Warsaw City Prize scholarship holder
2019 PhD at the Fine Arts Department/University of Jan Kochanowski, Kielce (PL)
Solo Exhibitions (selected)
2019
Wild riverChopin Point, Warsaw (PL)
2018
The Abstractionsinspiredby Nature,Tymczasowa Gallery, Warsaw(PL)
2017
Animamundi, Galeria Wystawa, Warsaw(PL)
2016
States of matter, the Blue Art Space gallery, Berlin(DE)
Re-constellations, ŁazienkowskaGallery, Warsaw(PL)
Perforations, Apteka Sztuki Gallery, Warsaw(PL)
Group exhibitions (selected)
2021
Universum/Uniwersam, Elektrownia Powiśle, Warsaw(PL)
2020
Lōtophágoi, MasovianCulturalInstitute, Warsaw(PL)
2019
Spectrum, Elector Gallery, Warsaw(PL)
2018
A photographer, a humanist, the Museum of Coal Mining, Zabrze(PL)
Black on White, MonumentalGallery, Lisbon(PT)
2017
60x60, Ślad Gallery, Kielce(PL)
8 Women, Metamorfozy Gallery, Warsaw (PL)
2016
Topos, PalazzoComunale, Sondrio(IT)
Pointsof View, Galeria Kazimierz, Cracow(PL)
The Art now, The National Museum, Cracow(PL)
We touch each other, Łowicka Gallery, Warsaw(PL