STATEMENT

Smoke Murmur explores the themes of presence, memory, and the cyclical nature of life. The exhibition begins with an experience of the here and now — a moment in which transformation is not an event, but a natural condition of existence. No form is ever final. Each carries traces of what came before and gestures toward what is yet to emerge. Life, death, and renewal are not opposites, but interconnected stages within a continuous process.cJoanna Małecka’s works do not present closed narratives or fixed meanings. Instead, they create spaces for attentive observation, where presence becomes perceptible through subtle shifts in structure, material, and light. What appears still remains in constant motion. What disappears does not cease to exist — it simply takes another form. A restrained palette and economy of visual means direct attention toward what is essential. Nature does not appear here as a subject to be represented, but as a principle of continual becoming — a process in which emergence, dissolution, and return coexist. The exhibition does not offer a single interpretation. It invites viewers to pause, to remain fully present in the here and now, where memory, matter, and time continuously converge in the experience of being.

BIO

Joanna Małecka is a Polish interdisciplinary artist and educator with a PhD in Fine Arts. Her practice explores presence, memory, and transformation through painting, printmaking, and multimedia. She lives and works in Lodz, Poland, and teaches at Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, where she runs the screen-printing studio. For many years, Małecka has been developing her independent artistic project shlagart, which brings together her ongoing explorations of contemporary art, visual language, and the relationship between form, space, and perception. Małecka has participated in numerous international artist residencies and has received scholarships and awards recognizing her artistic practice. Her work has been presented in several dozen solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including in Europe, the United States, Peru, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.