Barbara Palka-Winek

The sump­tu­ous paint­ings of Bar­bara Palka-Winek rep­re­sent a cross­roads of East and West. Draw­ing upon sources as var­ied as Ori­en­tal­ism, Byzan­tine art, and Myce­naean met­al­work, the artist also exhibits more con­tem­po­rary ref­er­ences includ­ing Art Nou­veau sym­bol­ism, and mod­ernist Abstrac­tion. Employ­ing a strongly styl­ized paint­ing method, the work is dis­tin­guished by lay­ered shapes and ele­gant color. The artist’s fig­u­ra­tive work is dis­tin­guished by dynamic, undu­lat­ing, and lyri­cal brush­strokes com­bined with curved “whiplash” lines of syn­co­pated rhythm. The strik­ing two-dimensionality with which Palka-Winek sur­rounds her fig­ures evokes the com­po­si­tion found in much Byzan­tine art, a ground that, in its nega­tion of space, may be regarded as negat­ing time—and in so doing, cre­at­ing a fig­ure of eternity.

In one work, enti­tled Pro­foimago the cen­tral figure’s crim­son robe appears tex­tured in a tech­nique that evinces obvi­ous sim­i­lar­i­ties to Russ­ian icon paint­ing. Simul­ta­ne­ously, her dewy skin is rounded and dimen­sional attest­ing to an extra­or­di­nary dec­o­ra­tive beauty. The artist treats the human fig­ure with­out shadow, and height­ens the lush sen­su­al­ity of skin by sur­round­ing it with areas of translu­cent, highly orna­men­tal, and bril­liantly com­posed areas of dec­o­ra­tion. Here birth, death, and the sen­su­al­ity of life exist side-by-side, sus­pended in a state of elo­quent equi­lib­rium. Charis­matic and force­ful, Palka-Winek’s use of seduc­tive color, vibrant brush­work, and sin­u­ous line high­light the devel­op­ment of the artist’s sense of free­dom and her unique style.

Palka-Winek’s work strad­dles the line between rep­re­sen­ta­tion and abstrac­tion, reveal­ing how ordi­nary objects often serve as a point of depar­ture for an artist’s abstract vision, or, alter­na­tively, how an artist’s abstract forms may sub­tly sug­gest rec­og­niz­able ele­ments. Such work addresses three sig­nif­i­cant pre­oc­cu­pa­tions in con­tem­po­rary art: shift­ing per­cep­tions of iden­tity; explo­rations of the polit­i­cal land­scape; and the notion of the sub­lime and the dema­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the art object. The artist’s strength lies within this fluid move­ment between gen­res and cat­e­gories. Caught between descrip­tion and dream­like states, and the observed and the imag­ined, Palka-Winek’s work trans­forms the nat­ural world into poetic visions and fan­tasy, while still uti­liz­ing sym­bolic ele­ments to con­vey psy­cho­log­i­cal ideas and empha­size the “free­dom” of art from tra­di­tional culture.

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