pleasant setting

11 July – 5 September 2015

Glasgow Sculpture Studios (GSS) presented a solo exhibition of new work, pleasant setting, by Marysia Gacek, developed throughout her one year Graduate Fellowship at GSS from November 2014 until November 2015.

Marysia Gacek’s work is known for its suggestive personal symbolism, using memory and arcane cultural referents that assert the transcendent possibilities of the banal. Gacek works in a variety of materials ranging from painting, clay, to textiles and video. By starting with a place, an image, a specific memory, or an object, she creates structures and narratives with loose connections using personal symbolism and different modes of representation.

For this exhibition titled ‘pleasant setting’ Gacek displayed a set of paintings on white muslin curtains which ran along the existing wall and windows at the front of the GSS gallery, the Magritte-style trompe l’oeil landscapes and one-to-one renderings portraying what lies directly behind them. The work continued Gacek’s interest in making audiences aware of the space that surrounds them; their location and its surrounding architecture with this installation proposing a simulation that draws one nearer to nature through a process of pointedly obscurantist representation.

The curtains were accompanied by a number of small sculptures dispersed around the room; amongst them a deflated crystal ball, and a ceramic two-headed snake about to shake hands with itself in perpetual self-effacement.

A small publication accompanied the exhibition including a commissioned text by writer and curator Melissa Canbaz.

Marysia Gacek (b. 1986, Nowy Targ) received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2014. Gacek has exhibited at ZK/U, the Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin; Govanhill Baths, Glasgow; Nurture Art, New York; Terminal Projects, New York; Unosunove, Rome; Unosolo Project Room, Milan and PS122 Gallery, New York. Gacek is a co-founder of the publishing imprint MARIA†. editions. The artist lives and works in Glasgow and New York.

Glasgow Sculpture Studios is a membership organisation that receives revenue funding from Creative Scotland and Glasgow Life.

The 2014 Graduate Fellowship is generously supported by The Fenton Arts Trust, The Hope Scott Trust, Adam Mickiewicz Institute and Culture.pl.

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Information about the Fellowship

The Fellowship running since 2005 is awarded annually to a graduate of The Glasgow School of Art’s Master of Fine Art Programme. Running for one year the award comprises of annual GSS Artist Membership, private studio accommodation, access to professional opportunities and specialist communal production facilities, training and curatorial, technical and administrative support. In addition to the above, funding is secured towards realising a solo project, as part of the GSS Public Programme.

The 2014 selection panel comprised of Laura Aldridge Artist, Glasgow Sculpture Studios member and MFA Graduate Fellow 2007; Louise Briggs Programme Coordinator at Glasgow Sculpture Studios; Kendall Koppe Director of Kendall Koppe Gallery, Glasgow; Kyla McDonald Head of Programme at Glasgow Sculpture Studios; and Pavel Pyś Exhibitions & Displays Curator at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.

Past recipients of the Graduate Fellowship have included Tessa Lynch (2014), Scott Rogers (2013), Alex Impey (2012), Sarah Forrest (2011), Risa Tsunegi (2010), Carla Scott Fullerton (2009) and Laura Aldridge (2007).