Work is a sybolic joining the social campaign. 'Black tears', which was initiated in 2016 by Women's Protest. This action supports human rights protests and demonstrations. Her hallmark – a black tear – refers to the symbolism of prison tattoo, in which a tear on the cheek means longing for freedom. The installation consists of two multiplied elements – a primitive cutting tool and a string. According to scientists, these are the only objects necessary for man to survive in extreme conditions. The project was presented in the space of the ArchaeologicalMuseum. The choice of this place is not only an obvious reference to the key element of the installation, i.e. the biface, but also a reminder of the fact that the violation of human dignity has a long history.

Fists belong to the oldest man-made stone tools. Their appearance was a real technological breakthrough in the Lower Paleolithic. Fists were still present in the Middle Paleolithic, which makes them the longest-used type of tool in human history. They are characterized by a lenticular cross-section and a symmetrical shape similar to an almond, heart or oval, with sharp side edges and a rounded base. They were created by gradual reduction of the stone body using double-sided processing. Fists were multi-purpose tools, sometimes called ‘Swiss Stone Age penknives’. They were primarily used for cutting up carcasses, filleting meat, obtaining bone marrow, but also perhaps for processing wood and digging in the ground. The symmetry of the fists and the perfection of their execution, which was not necessary to obtain functionality, suggests that their purpose was not limited to the role of knives or cleavers. It was hypothesized that they could perform important social functions as indicators of the quality of a potential partner in sexual selection. They were supposed to testify to possessing by the male individuals of ‘good genes’, high intellect and physical health, and their production was intended to impress female individuals. They are also proof of our ancestors' possession of a developed aesthetic sense.
Agata Witkowska

For Schaufenstergalerie Scharf Marusińska develops a site-specific installation. The conceptual base of the installation is a quotation of Jean-Paul Sartre: 'Were we silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act'. The work shows a reference to the current society without delivering a valency to it. At the moment many different subjects, which often pass into the emotional, move the world. Instantaneous a strong protest movement takes place inPolandagainst the current government. The so-called 'right party' and its conservative values as well as ideological images are more popular, not only in Poland, but everywhere inEuropeagain. Thus the question how to formulate 'against' these values and images arises. Between the active and passive resistance, activist's strategies has been formed, but is it the raving and stones flinging mob or is it the quiet opposition, freely from vandalism and scenarios of violence which can change systems with lasting effect? How can injustice and censorship be denounced? Is in this context really 'talking silver and silence gold'?

Elisabeth Saubach, Iris Kasper

This exhibition reveals what lies beneath the surface of everyday reality. It shows what happens behind the TV screen, dirty window on a bus, foggy glasses, behind our back and in our preoccupied mind. Those things which we usually don’t notice because we don’t want to, we are not able to, we are afraid of or simply we don’t believe we can achieve. The exhibition is composed of two elements which were realised during a residency in Birmingham – the effect of a social project named 'Good Visibility' and artistic interposition named 'Viewpoint'. Both of them tell us that looking beneath the surface is worthwhile.

This exhibition reveals what lies beneath the surface of everyday reality. It shows what happens behind the TV screen, dirty window on a bus, foggy glasses, behind our back and in our preoccupied mind. Those things which we usually don’t notice because we don’t want to, we are not able to, we are afraid of or simply we don’t believe we can achieve. The exhibition is composed of two elements which were realised during a residency in Birmingham – the effect of a social project named 'Good Visibility' and artistic interposition named 'Viewpoint'. Both of them tell us that looking beneath the surface is worthwhile.

Ancient orators used pars pro toto (a part for the whole) to replace names of objects, phenomena, concepts with their fragments. The figure was supposed to add emphasis to the issues they were describing. The Bible teaches: whoever has an ear, let them hear, even though we know that in order to hear we need more than one organ. Looking closely at fragments allows us to learn about the state of the whole organism.

We encourage you to look into the crevice, the black hole, the dirt that makes us look away.
We invite you to watch the ongoing processes taking place outside (and inside) us, and the celebration of what is left of them. Look at the structures, artefacts, diseases of objects whose ambition is to describe the whole world.

Brach-Czaina says: Those who explore the periphery and extract matter out of it represent the fearless society of affluence or, on the contrary, the utterly exhausted civilization looking for new borders. Marusińska’s ceramics is useless, unappetizing, deliberately repulsive. It resembles what we would secretly wish to dump, excrete, disengage from. We all know it – from laboratory photographs, tiny cameras inserted into body cavities, from flats. From caves, corridors and tunnels. From journeys to the centre of the Earth.

Michał Grzegorzek 

'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.'

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

Event and its trace – a record of the transformation process. Common motif: ceramics, shown as a clay ground on which to walk, as traces of dishes on tablecloths, as floor tiles, on which the skipping rope is reflected, as a pile of broken dishes.

Ceramic is inextricably linked with memory – just to mention the traditional grave medallions or family services passed on from generation to generation. It is also a material that takes over and stores the smallest traces of use, which over time draws a map of everyday, often very private events.

Ceramics (as a field of art) can also be, as the story of the author who at the age of fourteen left her family home and went to study in an art high school in Kielce shows, an 'excuse', a kind of escape. And also an imperfect justification for the choices made, in whose core lies a sense of guilt, and the structure of the shadows of events that could not have occurred if...

Karina Marusińska's 'Private sphere' is an intimate journey on indelible traces, on 'stamps' pressed into the child's mind and still present in the life of a woman. This is a tale of damage and traces of use, and at the same time fragile and surprisingly durable material, which, enclosing the past, is here and now - it opens to the future.

Michał Bieniek

'Between' is an interdisciplinary project that presents Karina Marusińska's creative output in a wide range of aspects. It is also an attempt to show how many problems modern design may touch, how thin the line between design and anti-design is nowadays. The exhibition proves that the departure from an attempted classification and labels attached to modern art is also valid in industrial design, and that porcelain is far more than the boring, classical tableware to be found in every house.

Agnieszka Kurgan

Who is Karina Marusińska? A designer, anti-designer, potter, installation artist, performer? Her first individual exhibition ‘Between’ attempts to answer this question, while showing how diverse her works are Contemporary definitions of design – treating it as a critical operation on human imagination located legitimately among other visual arts – make such questions and distinctions pointless. And this understanding of design is characteristic of Marusińska’s creative activity, who represents the youngest generation of Polish designers.

‘Between’ includes utilitarian designs, some of which were made in short series in porcelain factories, and others remained prototypes waiting for production. But that is not everything. The exhibition also displays works that look like manufacturing rejects or flawed products at first sight, an association which is perfectly justified. When working in the factories, Marusińska explores piles of scrapped by-products in search of their reusability, new functions and aesthetic value. This is how ‘REproducts’, ‘Chipped’, ‘Handles’, ‘Uhaha’, ‘Well Hung’ and ‘Weathered’ were made.

Another group of works is a commentary to the production processes in factories, their repeatability and alienation of accepted patterns. In ‘Hard made’ and ‘Q’, the signatures which serve as an internal language of communication among the workers become ornaments, replacing the classic floral motifs. ‘Relations’, ‘Steamers’, ‘Semi-products’ or ‘Dripped’ make use of industrial semi-products in new functions - objects merged in technological processing. Those twisted mutants pay homage to the uniqueness of a flaw. Manipulation and playing with form and meaning are in turn the leading motifs of the projects ‘Security Tag’, ‘Pickled’, ‘Cores’, ‘CaleidosCUP’, ‘Pla(y)te’, ‘VaseLID’ and ‘SURprise’. Marusińska invites the user to engage in a game by breaking away with the conventional approach and looking for new associations.

Some of her works go even further, provoking and causing disgust, sneering at the notion of ‘good taste’ and ‘table etiquette’. ‘Squat’ is a plate inspired in its form by squatting toilets and so it looks like one (the project may bring to mind the scene from Luis Bunuel's ‘Phantom of Liberty’, where the guests sit at the table on toilet seats and it is the eating that is done secretly and in hiding, like an obscene activity). ‘Hairy’ is a cup-and-saucer set decorated with hairs embedded in the bottom. They affect our prejudices and the disgusting vision of finding a hair in our tea (as well as referring to another surrealist icon – Meret Oppenheim's furry breakfast).

Yet another set of works deals with the sociological and feminist issues in which the artist is especially interested. ‘Taboo’ is a series of photographs by Justyna Fedec, in which the female members of the Łuhuu! artistic group, stylized to resemble Baroque porcelain figurines, are caught in intimate, embarrassing poses – picking the nose, squeezing the zits or adjusting underwear. Traditionally, the porcelain figurines of this type are displayed in special showcases in representative places and they depict properly courteous generic scenes. Here, Marusińska plays with the convention. Ultimately, she plans to make actual porcelain figurines caught in those intimate situations, basing them on the photographs.

‘All different, all diverse’ is a paraphrased slogan of equality parades, calling for tolerance (originally ‘All different, all equal’). This series of photographs shows mass-produced Chinese porcelain figurines that should theoretically be identical, but in fact they differ, especially in facial expressions and anatomical detail.

‘Emblema’ is a project that originated during the 46th international plein-air in Bolesławiec and it documents Marusińska’s work in the porcelain factory. The characteristic element featuring in all the photos are the designer's blue fingernails, a reference to the traditionally pale-blue Bolesławiec glaze. How to reconcile the craving for being a beautiful, well-kept woman with the physical work in the factory, requiring direct contact with clay? And then there is the ‘Dog’ with the nodding head. This icon of the 1980's, the head-swaying toy that used to be placed in so many Polish cars, appears in a refreshed, minimalistic, porcelain version which will not decorate car interiors but rather modern flats - a sentimental, surrealist flashback of the Communist kitsch.

‘Between’ is an interdisciplinary project that presents Karina Marusińska's creative output in a wide range of aspects. It is also an attempt to show how many problems modern design may touch, how thin the line between design and anti-design is nowadays. The exhibition proves that the departure from an attempted classification and labels attached to modern art is also valid in industrial design, and that porcelain is far more than the boring, classical tableware to be found in every house.

Agnieszka Kurgan