16.05.2023 / at 18:00 / Terminal Kultury Gocław - a branch of CPK, 24 Jana Nowaka-Jeziorańskiego St., Warsaw /.
Ground Floor Gallery
Everything here is about making a decision. Now that you're here, take a moment. How long it will be is up to you - go in, take a look, take the plunge. What are your first associations? In the water? In nature? In thoughts? In something good? One can read these frames in many ways. For the author, it's an invitation to "dive into emotions, reflect on the present, feel coexistence with nature, be present and accept yourself and the passing of time."
For me it's an opportunity for an amazing break, time spent in some parallel world. A close, though unusual, unspecified one. You can see references to literature here, in which case the images are full of Ophelia or characters from Norse tales. You can read the people in these frames as part of Slavic history and traditions. Finally, they can be visions and stories about people being close to nature or our commonality with nature. Each of these versions is so broad and capacious that you are sure to find an answer close to you. When did these immersions happen? Not today. Images made using the wet collodion method, ambrotypes, in which the author specializes, were commonly used a hundred and sixty and fifty years ago. Monika Cichoszewska explains: "this is a personal series of ambrotypes made on transparent glass plates - in a unique manual-chemical wet collodion technique, dating back to the second half of the 19th century - on whose surface the image is created by shiny metallic silver."
The technology itself sends us back to the past. Or maybe these immersions are yet to happen? Maybe you'll take any painting with you after you leave the gallery? Maybe you will remember it in some time? The world of "Immersions" has no specific "here and now." Devoid of geography and date, it simply appears as a vision from someday. It is sometimes difficult to determine what exactly is happening in these pictures. So it all depends on the beholder and the beholder. On you and me. What we see, what we intuit, what we guess and what we feel. Any answer is good.
Joanna Kinowska
Monika Cichoszewska - Photographer, paraglider pilot, traveler.
She photographs with large-format cameras and camera obscura. She is an advocate of darkroom work, manual and chemical processes in photography. A special place in her sphere of interest is the Ambrotype technique, which she has chosen as a medium for artistic communication.
In 2017, she was among those selected in the DEBUTS 2017 international competition and participated in the prestigious exhibition in Lille at the Maison de la Photographie Gallery. In 2021, she received the main prize "Exhibit yourself at the CCA" at the Center for Contemporary Art in Torun, culminating in a solo exhibition in April 2022. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Poland, France, Portugal, USA, Portugal and Spain, and among others in the VI Piotrków Art Biennale, XII Biennale of Mountain Photography, the 7th Brest Festival of Open-Hole Photography, where she took second place, the OFFO Festival, the Foto Open 2021 FotoArtFestival in Bielsko Biala as a finalist, the Festival in Old Techniques BWA Kielce and "Contacts" BWA Jelenia Gora. Finalist in international competitions, and her work has been published in Shots Magazine USA, Hand Magazine, USA, Art Vue, Belgium, Polish Women Photographers, in Kontakty, among others.