Ewa Doroszenko

I am a visual artist based in Warsaw, Poland. My main interests focus on painting, installation and photography – in particular, the intersection area between these practices. I create what I call ‘visual situations’ through both physical objects and digital pieces. My artistic research addresses questions of future technology in tune with digital aesthetics and traditional fine arts. The main motive of my paintings is the concept of an expanding, complex mechanism. My works do not show existent devices but rather an abstract representation of a complicated act of ‘love machines’. This complex love structure is analysed and built from scratch in form of expanding installations that connect male and female elements; they are not always antagonist or opposing each other. In my works, I am constantly thinking how to define both my female identity as well as my identity as a woman in the fields of art and technology.

I never doubted that I wanted to be an artist; my life was inevitably drawn to this direction. Even as a little kid I often heard that I was very talented in painting and drawing. The urge to paint was so strong I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else. I studied painting, which soon became the basic medium in my projects. For this, I received a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland (2012), where I also obtained my Master of Fine Arts (2008). Now I am more engaged in different mediums, from photography to sound, but the most interesting one for me is still creating visual situations. I am endlessly fascinated by art and its use as a visual language. It satisfies my constant desire to deconstruct and to better understand the things around me.

This issue is too complex for an immediate answer. Unfortunately, there are limited possibilities in the creative field in Poland. The art scene is very small, and we don't really have a well functioning market. There are very few non-profit exhibition spaces, no support for artists, no spaces to rent. Therefore, a lot of Polish artists reach a point in their careers when there is no further way to go very early. This was the main reason I decided to travel abroad for artist-in-residence programs: to have more opportunities, to immerse myself in various projects. Many art centres offer time and space in a contemplative environment to think, create, and, the most important, to connect. Artist residencies provide very unique situations. Each one that I have participated in has provided me with something very specific that had direct relation to the work I was making at the time. For me the residence periods in Spain, Austria, Italy, Norway and Greece were very inspiring and influential and they generated enough energy for months.

I use both online formats and physical elements to engage with digital culture. I think of everything I do as one stream of research and practice. As many artists, nowadays I am inspired by the culture of the web, but I cannot call myself a new-media artist or a ‘post-internet artist’. Of course, I use many digital technologies and strategies to create installations in the real world, but I guess I could call myself a conceptual or contemporary artist as well. My practice is concerned with making a way to connect with the world in a digital age. I am struck by the idea of representation in the Internet world. I think about the reconstruction of memory in virtual worlds and the rebuilding of ideas from the virtual world into physical painting. I would like my work to move smoothly between the screen and real space. In the aesthetics of my work, I am interested in the idea of imperfection and the allowance of error, which makes me think about the fact that modern technologies have built-in flaws and imperfections in them. I try to examine ways of deconstructing the digital pieces; I like the aesthetic of glitches, textures, damaged photographs and defects in the virtual world.

I have never had a really organized practice. I am kind of always doing everything, at once. When I am thinking about a new work, I try to create structures with many layers of meaning. I would say the most important thing is the research. My works are not solely about the medium; the material choices are calculated and meant to bring the idea to life. By using a wide variety of art languages, I wish to develop unique art forms, combining different features of each medium with strong attention to ideas and formal solutions. Art making is a wonderful way to learn new things and then to digest, analyse, and interpret them.

It has to be Kurt Schwitters, who invented the concept of Merz – the combination for artistic purposes of all conceivable materials. He is my constant source of inspiration. Schwitters was obsessed with the idea of creating a type of art that embraced all forms of expression, and this idea is very close to me. There are many other artists that have influenced me in some way, including Katarzyna Kobro, Wojciech Fangor, or Edward Krasiński. Currently, my influences vary widely and a lot of them fall outside the visual arts. I tend to do researches in psychology and that has become important in my works. Also, I receive a lot of influences from the world of literature. My top list of authors might include Stanisław Lem, Michel Houellebecq, Margaret Atwood and even Henry David Thoreau.

My explorations are not limited by medium, and in fact I experiment with various methods in an attempt to portray my thoughts. My techniques involve a free manipulation of images. Through engaging a different range of surfaces – including canvases and walls – and using geometric designs, my installations explore how artworks function in a three-dimensional field. I almost always use traditional media – my background is based on painting. My work seems to progress in a very linear way, it is a very oriented process. I begin with traditional media, and then start to incorporate technology, and then I also explore spatial elements. I found out digital media to be the best tool to go forward, and I started making works that could mix everything that had previously been separated. I use many tools, both technical and traditional, and I am constantly searching for new ones to learn. I am not dependent on any one tool. I never let my own technical skills stop me from pursuing an idea.

I am not quite sure if art is capable of changing something or not. In my opinion, if artists want to change world, it is good when they try, even on a small scale. But currently, artists do not take part in high-level discussions of social, political, and ecological issues. Unfortunately, art does not affect a lot of people.

I am collaborating with my husband Jacek Doroszenko on the Soundreaming project. The project started during our artist-in-residence visit in Barcelona in 2014. Soundreaming features audio, video, design and photography. It is a digital audio-visual archive that uses the environment as the main inspiration. We would like to prepare a show in which audible and visible spheres interacted with each other. Feel free to visit: www.soundreaming.org. I am also working on a new painting installation, which will be a combination of geometry, feminism and the Internet. Moreover, I am happy to inform that soon I am going to Lithuania and then to Portugal in a framework of more artist-in-residence programs!