Pola Dwurnik has a solo exhibition show called “Apolonia’s Twelve Husbands” at Krupa Gallery in Warsaw.
The artist refers to her earlier series titled “Apolonia’s Garden”, in which she portrayed her ex-boyfriends personified as animals. This time, referring to the history of painting, she has generated twelve male portraits representing the twelve months of a year. One of them, is not only the artist’s “imaginary husbands” or a representation of a different season, but in fact, is likewise a separate phase throughout a woman’s life as well as with the concept of an ideal partner. Dwurnik’s paintings combine a variety of elements inspired by her own experiences in addition with multiple prospects and imaginary personifications of other women that caused as a result the number of twelve metaphors of our modern world. “While she approaches the subject matter with the sense of humour typical of her entire oeuvre, it doesn’t deprive the series of its significant – or occasionally even dire - nature”.
In one of her interviews with Contemporary Lyx magazine, she has mentioned “I was inspired by an old well-established way of presenting people, their virtues and vices, with the use of animal figures. At the same time, what the series refers to most of all is the story of the sorceress Alcina, a character from the sixth canto of “Orlando Furioso” by Ludovico Ariosto.
As a more detailed explanation for the “Apolonia’s Twelve Husbands” series she specified that they are depicting 12 stages of human life, from youth to old age. While she was working on the paintings, she was using pieces of her life, her understandings, and her observations of other humans. According to her words, “The paintings form a circle; the whole series is, in fact, a circle. “January” is a young boy with a backpack standing against a background of a mountainous landscape. A similar boy can be found in “December”, this time taking on the role of a male nurse accompanying a dying old man. After he leaves the bedside of this dying man, he will take off his white lab gown, put on his backpack and head for the mountains. Then we have “January” again, bright and careless”.
The exhibition is now open at Krupa Gallery from 20 September to 15 October
More info: Twelve Husbands of Apolonia
