Agata Stępień

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PAINTING
In her painting practice, the artist focuses on exploring texture and the saturation of color as carriers of meaning and emotion. A key element of her work is the process of “arresting” the image – both in a material and symbolic sense – by sealing layers of paint under a thick, transparent coat of epoxy resin. This formal gesture serves not only an aesthetic function but also a metaphorical one: the resin acts as a contemporary form of amber, a conserving medium that freezes a fragment of the image, a gesture, a piece of history. This act of containment affirms the significance of the captured moment, elevating it to an almost monumental dimension.

The artist is primarily interested in figurative painting – intense, saturated, and consciously overloaded. She works mostly in large formats (e.g., 3 × 4.5 meters, up to 8 meters), creating immersive spaces that draw the viewer into the world of the painting, provoking an almost physical, sensual, total experience. Often, the point of departure for a composition is the artist’s own body, whose presence becomes inscribed into the structure of the work. Each canvas is a dense field of layered meanings – narratives intertwine and accumulate, forming highly charged structures that pulse with emotion: the urgency of expression, the impossibility of silence, the suspended gesture on the verge of eruption.

Her recent series centers on women – often anonymous, historically absent, erased or voiceless. Inspired by the women in her own family, these figures are re-materialized through the act of painting, becoming embodied presences that reclaim memory and space. Other figures remain nameless – spectral beings with whom the artist coexists, enters into dialogue, sensing their presence and even their transformative impact.

Her creative process is dialogical – she often returns to earlier works, sometimes years later, to transform or reframe them. Her chosen medium is acrylic, a technique that allows for rapid, instinctive, and decisive gestures, layered surfaces, and ongoing material experimentation. Her painting could be described as saturated, heavy, intense, and at times dark – often grounded in personal and collective histories, where the image becomes both a trace and a witness.
This is a painting of gesture and tension, continually balancing between excess and silence, embodiment and trace, the scream of color and its stillness.




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© Agata Stępień 2025