Solo exhibition “Recurring Points in the Net of Rays”,
Przypkowski Museum in Jędrzejów, 2025
Phot. Bartosz Górka
Przypkowski Museum in Jędrzejów, 2025
Phot. Bartosz Górka
The cyclical nature of the seasons and the sun’s movement across the sky led ancient communities to experience time as a rotating wheel. Every end became a beginning; past and future ceased to exist, and the present stretched into eternity.
Alicja Bielawska’s multi-element installation at the Przypkowski Museum in Jędrzejów explores this metaphysical and anthropological understanding of time and objects. The sculptures, textiles, ceramics, and drawings presented by the artist are, as she emphasizes, autonomous works of art, yet they remain interconnected. The shapes of these objects reference everyday items, scaled up or altered by memory. The recurring colors and forms across various techniques create a kind of axis mundi – a cosmic axis cutting through the everyday, a pause in time, once believed to be the point of contact between what has been and what is yet to come.
The points, diagonals, spirals, and arcs mapped out by Bielawska form a narrative on the edge of the empirical, the sensory, and the spiritual. They act as a visual code of geometric abstraction, softened by hand-drawn lines, the irregularity of ceramic vessels, and stains on fabric. They lead the viewer through a sensual experience of color and the tactile qualities of various materials. Ultimately, they frame the cosmic forces that link Bielawska’s objects into a story about themselves, about our relationships with things, and about the entanglement of time that flows between them.
As in any cosmography, Bielawska’s micro-universe has its stellar keystone – the Sun. The shimmering warm hues of the textiles and glazes on the artist’s creased ceramic vases become a material sign of a pagan epiphany of light. The alchemical power of rays is evoked in a ceramic gnomon mounted on the gallery wall and in colorful hemispheres arranged in circular trajectories. The life-giving force of the Sun is reflected in a fan of colors found in folding screens made of fabrics dyed with onion skins, tansy, elderberries, and spruce cones. In Bielawska’s cosmic universe, the cycle of life can be viewed through the lens of objects, nature, and ourselves. In the exhibition’s design, the human figure becomes a key point of reference, a metrical proportion for nearly everything around it. Yet, the humankind is not the measure of all things – only, and profoundly, a component of the whole. That is why, within the net of lines that integrates the exhibition, visitors will not find a trap, but rather a space for reflection – on time, memory, objects, and the light that exist both within us and around us.
Alicja Bielawska’s multi-element installation at the Przypkowski Museum in Jędrzejów explores this metaphysical and anthropological understanding of time and objects. The sculptures, textiles, ceramics, and drawings presented by the artist are, as she emphasizes, autonomous works of art, yet they remain interconnected. The shapes of these objects reference everyday items, scaled up or altered by memory. The recurring colors and forms across various techniques create a kind of axis mundi – a cosmic axis cutting through the everyday, a pause in time, once believed to be the point of contact between what has been and what is yet to come.
The points, diagonals, spirals, and arcs mapped out by Bielawska form a narrative on the edge of the empirical, the sensory, and the spiritual. They act as a visual code of geometric abstraction, softened by hand-drawn lines, the irregularity of ceramic vessels, and stains on fabric. They lead the viewer through a sensual experience of color and the tactile qualities of various materials. Ultimately, they frame the cosmic forces that link Bielawska’s objects into a story about themselves, about our relationships with things, and about the entanglement of time that flows between them.
As in any cosmography, Bielawska’s micro-universe has its stellar keystone – the Sun. The shimmering warm hues of the textiles and glazes on the artist’s creased ceramic vases become a material sign of a pagan epiphany of light. The alchemical power of rays is evoked in a ceramic gnomon mounted on the gallery wall and in colorful hemispheres arranged in circular trajectories. The life-giving force of the Sun is reflected in a fan of colors found in folding screens made of fabrics dyed with onion skins, tansy, elderberries, and spruce cones. In Bielawska’s cosmic universe, the cycle of life can be viewed through the lens of objects, nature, and ourselves. In the exhibition’s design, the human figure becomes a key point of reference, a metrical proportion for nearly everything around it. Yet, the humankind is not the measure of all things – only, and profoundly, a component of the whole. That is why, within the net of lines that integrates the exhibition, visitors will not find a trap, but rather a space for reflection – on time, memory, objects, and the light that exist both within us and around us.
Monika Przypkowska
The exhibition “Recurring Points in the Net of Rays” features the following works:
In the northern part of the Pavilion:
“Materials of Time I, II, III, IV”, 2025, glazed ceramics, tables from the collection of the Przypkowski Museum in Jędrzejów
“Accretions”, 2025, silk hand-dyed with plant-based dyes (shades obtained from onion skins), steel, paint
“Recurring Points”, 2024, crayon, pencil on paper
In the northern part of the Pavilion:
“Materials of Time I, II, III, IV”, 2025, glazed ceramics, tables from the collection of the Przypkowski Museum in Jędrzejów
“Accretions”, 2025, silk hand-dyed with plant-based dyes (shades obtained from onion skins), steel, paint
“Recurring Points”, 2024, crayon, pencil on paper
In the southern part of the Pavilion:
“Between the Ray and the Shadow (screen)”, 2025, silk hand-dyed with plant-based dyes (pink dye from spruce cones, yellow from tansy, blue from elderberries), steel, paint
“Double Spaces I, II”, 2025, crayon on paper
“Variable Configurations of Time”, 2025, glazed ceramics, brass
“Between the Ray and the Shadow (screen)”, 2025, silk hand-dyed with plant-based dyes (pink dye from spruce cones, yellow from tansy, blue from elderberries), steel, paint
“Double Spaces I, II”, 2025, crayon on paper
“Variable Configurations of Time”, 2025, glazed ceramics, brass
This project was completed as part of a scholarship programme funded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
