Iza Opiełka
BIO
Iza Opiełka is a visual artist and painter with ties to Wrocław, where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. She was a finalist in the Best Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław Diploma Projects. Her canvases have been shown at exhibitions in Krupa Gallery, BWA Wrocław, Wrocław’s Municipal Gallery, during the SURVIVAL Art Review, and at the Stefan Gierowski Foundation in Warsaw. She is a co-founder and curator of JEST Gallery, an artist-run space focusing on the work of young artists. She makes abstract art, inspired by visual codes found in electronic communication.
Artwork
T-POP, acrylic on canvas, 2022
Opiełka’s abstracts look at the experiences and stories mediated by the smartphone screen: pop-culture icons, Asian ads, consumerism, and app interfaces. She often Photoshops the graphics she finds. Multiplied, rescaled, and layered, the forms are then carried over to stencils, which serve as a foundation for her oil and acrylic canvases. Her “copy-and-paste” method draws from how content functions on the Internet. T-POP has a monochromatic color scheme maintained in cool shades of gray. The title is inspired by typography, which serves a base for formal modifications, like framing and distortion. The artist strips the graphic symbol of its meaning, leaving purely formal associations. The picture is built on repeating layers, going from lighter to darker tones, using hand-cut stencils that leave a visible texture on the picture.
