May 17, 20212 min read

MARTYNA BENEDYKA. Honorable Mention.

What is a photograph?

For me, a fragment of quick-silver, a lucid dream, a scribbled note from the subconscious to be deciphered, perhaps, over years.

It is a monologue trying to become a conversation, an offering, an alibi, a salute.

Eva Rubinstein

To me, the fact that no two photographic prints are ever exactly the same is a perfect analogy of how I view painting. Photography has taught me that memory is fragile and uncertain and through my painted surfaces memories are recorded and transformed. Modest in scale and subject, my paintings become fleeting moments of distorted reality.

Examining ideas of existence and being, I look for the essence of a person through the essence of an object. The camera becomes a link between an intense description of the world of things and my own response to it. My works are fragments that act like poetic signs; I would like to encourage people to slow down and to see the poetry of everyday life.

Through the process of cumulative observation some of my favourite motifs are endlessly copied while others, once pushed to the edge, simply vanish. The diversity of my work unites the idea of looking behind what is seen, which is my main concern.