Dorota Buczkowska
Plain bile would come from the liver
According to ancient beliefs the human being and other living creatures are interconnected by the means of fours elements, i.e. fire, earth, air and water, which – based on the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen – are in turn related to bodily fluids, the so-called humours, i.e. yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm. The physical condition of the human body is affected by their proportions and any disturbances in their level might lead to a disease. They also define one’s temperament (choleric, melancholic, sanguine or phlegmatic), pointing to the psychosomatic, inseparable interdependence between the spirit and the body. Thus, the temperament – a mixture of Hippocratic fluids – is on the one hand biologically predetermined, and on the other hand it specifies the individual type of one’s psyche.
Dorota Buczkowska’s drawings focus on combining physiology with psyche and on connecting the flows of emotions with the flows of bodily fluids; they explore various spaces of corporeality, sensuality, feelings and mind. Organised in a kind of a tableau, i.e. a nearly academic collection or a collection typical of natural sciences, they imperceptibly turn from abstract forms into the organic, figurative and fantastic ones. They preserve their complete autonomy and interconnectedness, ensuing from a great concentration and centrifugal energy, dragging the viewer deeper and deeper towards the invisible centre. Their materiality – density and saturation in combination with their transparency – result from the materials applied, i.e. colourful makeup products. Posing no barrier to the light, they resemble X-rays of rather undefined emotional organs, concentrations, combinations, fractures. The materiality of the dense tissue in the drawings is combined with the corporeality of the both forms and artistic gesture itself, with the inclusion of the direct relation of touch, i.e. the moments of connection between the colour applied and the living, warm skin. For a second there, a layer of black, thick lines subconsciously makes you think of a gentle movement of eyelashes, deep red – of the contour of the mouth, beige – of cheekbones glistening from under the layer of rouge. All of it, however, is already devoid of shape, blurred into abstract curls and stains, with the afterimage resembling the sensuality of the body, equivocal emotions, intensified presence and emptiness.
Not clearly defined fragments balancing at the very borderline of their recognisability seem to be close, intimate, natural, but at the same time artificial and separated, like dead cells, secretions already disconnected from the living circulation and human structures. As if in a laboratory, they are subject to observation and analysis; however, not a cold and distanced one, but carried out in the spirit of co-sympathy and with the need to find in these shreds our own – missing, lost, decayed, but potentially still active – life substances.
Kaja Pawełek


Dorota Buczkowska is active in various fields and media, i.e. in drawing, graphics, painting, photography, installations, sculpture and films. In her works she often addresses topics connected with the perception of corporeality, physiology and biology of the body, for the depiction of which she uses metaphors, occasionally tinted with surreal moods and poetic subtleties. Her videos are usually a result of careful observation of the environment, sublimated into moving pictures conveying mysterious, difficult to define contents. The most recent cycle of Buczkowska’s drawings depict soft, organic forms of gentle colours, obtained in result of the use of colourful body beauty products.
Dorota Buczkowska (born in 1971) – student at the Faculty of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (class of professor Grzegorz Kowalski) in 1999-2003, and in 2002-2003 at Centre National des Arts Plastiques Villa Arson in Nice, France. Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. Cooperates with the Czarna Gallery in Warsaw.
Selected individual exhibitions: "Dwa lata w chmurach / Two years in the clouds", Czarna Gallery, Warsaw (2007); "Cyrkulacje / Circulations", Zak Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2007); "Interror", Czarna Gallery, Warsaw (2008); "Stany Przejściowe / Transitional States", CRAC Sete, France (2008); "Moving images in public space", Videospread, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2009); Liverpool Biennale, United Kingdom (2009); "Replikantki / Replicants”, BWA Katowice (2010); "Projekt badawczy / Research project", Studio Gallery, Warsaw (2011); "Some fragments are incomplete", Czarna Gallery, Warsaw (2011) and Skulpturenmuseum, Marl (2012). The artist also took part in a number of prestigious collective exhibitions, among others in the following: "Dew point", Raster Gallery, Warsaw (2006); "Moja Matka Nie Jest Boska / My Mother Is Not Devine”, Centre for Contemporary Art (CSW) Bunkier Sztuki, Starmach Gallery, Kraków (2008); "Efekt czerwonych oczu / The Red-Eye Effect", CSW, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2008); "Nature Nation", Museum On The Seam, Jerusalem, Israel (2009); "Podróż wokół czaszki / Journey around the skull", CSW Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2010); "Paris Photo", Paris, France (2010); Curated by_vienna 2011, Stainek Gallery, Austria (2011); WANI, Fondation Paul Ricard de Paris, France (2011), Lorne Sculpture 2011, Biennale of Contemporary Sculpture (Australia); "Love for the natural", Arsenal Gallery, Poznań (2011); "Jestem prawie na każdej wystawie / I’m present at almost every exhibition”, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2012); "Happiness is a warm gun", Rizzordi Art Foundation, Sankt-Petersburg.