Anna Trojanowska, THE ORDER OF ENTROPY_07, 2020, Lithograph, 20″ x 29.1″
Guest blog post by Paloma Mayorga
Internationally recognized printmaker, Anna Trojanowska, turns to Carrara marble to create detailed lithographs that explore the space that exists between real life and imaginary worlds. Fascinated by geometric abstraction, the Polish artist works from her home studio in Wrocławski, Poland, where she balances her artistic practice with her life as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design.
When speaking of her methodical compositions, Trojanowska explained in her recent conversation with Miranda Metcalf of Hello, Print Friend, “If art is free from [social] connections, it can stay longer.” And so she has spent over twenty years experimenting with printmaking processes to seamlessly invent new spaces that her audiences can visually decode.
Video still from “Anna Trojanowska – OPT Artist Talk” by the Vernon Public Art Gallery for The Okanagan Print Triennial, 2021.
In an artist talk she did for The Okanagan Print Triennial in March 2021, Trojanowska demonstrated a unique process that takes lithography to a new dimension. Traditionally, lithography is a printmaking technique in which a surface, normally a block of limestone, is chemically etched to receive ink in some places and repel it in others. Trojanowska works with a more economically accessible stone, marble, and takes this laborious process further by experimenting with photosensitive materials, spray paint, and other objects to create compositions that seem to defy the laws of physics.
Anna Trojanowska, UTWÓR PRACOWNICZY_04, 2021, Lithograph on marble, 20″ x 29.1″
Trojanowska enthusiastically ventures into the printmaking studio like an alchemist’s workshop. She writes, “Prints created in it are like photographs of another reality, which I sometimes don’t understand. They are like snapshots from a dream from which we remember only some senseless image, sound, or smell. And the more we try to remember it, the more it fades away. A mysterious afterimage remains.”
Learn more about Anna Trojanowska and the lithography process by visiting litografia.pl and by listening to her recent interview on Hello, Print Friend:
View Anna Trojanowska’s work at Ivester Contemporary
Part of our 5×5 online exhibition this year included an in-person element at Ivester Contemporary. After our juror, Caitlin Clay, Curator of Exhibitions at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET), chose the five exhibiting artists based on their five submitted works, Ivester Contemporary chose two works per artist to hang in their auxiliary gallery. The show is up until January 22, 2022 with an opening on January 14–a kickoff event for PrintAustin’s 2022 festival!
The 5X5
In partnership with Ivester Contemporary, PrintAustin’s 2nd annual online juried exhibition, The 5×5, is juried by Caitlin Clay, Curator of Exhibitions at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas. This virtual exhibition–with an in-person element at Ivester–showcases five works by five contemporary artists from the United States, Mexico, and Poland, giving us a broad survey of printmaking happening across the globe.
Ivester Contemporary
Ivester Contemporary is an Austin-based contemporary fine art gallery committed to connecting people with leading local and regional artists and ideas. Rotating exhibitions are focused on creating a context for contemplation, deepening appreciation for the visual arts, and facilitating a dialog between the artist and their viewers. Ivester Contemporary is located within the Canopy Creative Complex in East Austin, a central hub for artists, gallerists, and other creative types.
Hello, Print Friend
Hello, Print Friend is a podcast dedicated to the celebration and amplification of contemporary printmaking and its culture. Releasing interviews every week with artists, activists, curators, and print champions, we explore what it is that brings together this passionate, yet often geographically separated community, across a press bed and around the world.
