SOLSTICE – Opening Reception and Exhibition at the Szczecin Academy of Art

TURNING POINT Department of Graphic Arts, Szczecin Academy of Art The Szczecin Academy of Art and the Świdwin Cultural Center “Zamek” invite you to the annual exhibition of two studios from the Department of Graphic Arts. The presented works materialize in various ways the culminating point where process and content express extreme tension before the image takes its final form. They constitute an artistic threshold, a state of suspension between the creative gesture and a new visual reality. They mark the moment when the creative process allows one to attune one’s sensibility to entirely new registers of experiencing the image. The Studio of Alternative Imaging Methods, led by Dr. Maciej Osmycki, explores the boundaries of the image—where painting ceases to be brush and canvas and becomes an event. The works arise from improvisation, automatic and random actions, experiments with matter, the elements, and entoptic phenomena, but also from glitches, AI, and precisely designed processes. Inspirations range from Chinese calligraphy and Japanese one-stroke painting to the avant-garde and digital culture, with the boundary between intention and phenomenon serving as a common thread. Dr. Natalia Szostak’s Image Concept Studio develops perceptual and manual skills in parallel with conceptual competencies, treating visual thinking and independent artistic decision-making as an essential part of the artist’s craft. Painting, in its broadest sense, is here a space for reflection on reality, in which the individual justification of the choices made plays a significant role.