Agnieszka Katz Barlow
Floof Relic
distemper and oil on canvas
2022
I’m interested in visual intellect and in playfully composing ideas that come from an internal digested pulp. Socio-political structures, biology, consciousness, time, connectivity, ancient spiritual practices, shapely fruit, the moon, ancestral longing, climate change fear, shadows, rituals, clouds, things you cannot measure, things you cannot define – are some of the things that feed into this pulp.
From here, narratives and spaces take shape that can only exist within the language of painting.
They are ambivalent and anarchic shapes and spaces that avoid binary ideologies.
Flat, wayward and vibrant, existing somewhere in between what you know and what you don’t know.
I let my work be a balancing act of paradoxes – at once figurative and abstract, sensual and dark, violent and playful, masculine and feminine, deeply serious and
humorous, layered and slow yet seemingly fast and simple.
A mother of two teenage girls, my path as an artist has been one shared with that of motherhood for the past 15 years. I did my MFA at the Slade whilst juggling being a full time carer of two small children.
The work I make as a painter involves many different subjects, but each mark I make carries the weight of being a woman and mother.
Polish-Swedish artist Agnieszka Katz Barlow lives and works in London. She received a BA in Fine Art from Central St Martins and an MFA from Slade School of Art, London in 2015.
Agnieszka has recently exhibited at Kingsgate Project space, London, All woman biennale, Copeland gallery, Object Space Gallery in Spokane, Washington, at Beep Biennale in Swansea, and had a solo presentation at Pinch, London. She was awarded the Barto dos Santos memorial award in 2015. Her work is held in private collections in the UK and the US.
