The fabric of the skin, wrin­kles, hand gestures. The joint exhibition of works by Zofia Rydet (1911–1997) and Aneta Grzeszykow­ska (born 1974) is a show of two artists who use the camera to con­struct cap­tivating and rhetorically rich images of the female body.

Their works were first shown together in 2006 at an exhibition at Galeria Kronika in Bytom. The project presen­ted then, Plan, realized by Grzeszykow­ska with Jan Smaga, was linked to Rydet’s Sociological Record primarily by the nature of the obses­sive documen­tation common to the two works. Their new encoun­ter high­lights another theme less debated so far but cen­tral to the work of both artists: the image of the woman. Two dimen­sions of this image claim the foreground: iden­tity and the existen­tial. The medium for emotion and time encoded in the image is the body and its outer layer: skin. Both Rydet and Grzeszykow­ska elaborate the female por­trait in an individual manner trans­gres­sing main­stream conven­tions. Rydet’s Women on Thresholds and Grzeszykowska’s Negative Make-​Up are images of female autonomy, full of power and smashing social stereotypes.

The exhibition at Raster also touches on the essence of photography: its power of brin­ging to life and kil­ling off. The driving force behind Rydet’s photographic prac­tice was a desire to per­petuate the world and the depar­ting. Grzeszykow­ska attempts the reverse per­spec­tive. Using meticulously direc­ted photographic images, she brings non-​existent charac­ters to life or animates dead objects. The two artists express a similar allure of over­coming the two-​dimensionality of photography, in both time and space. Thus in the exhibition we present unique photographic items by Rydet from her Trans­for­mations cycle, and heads of leather sewn by Grzeszykow­ska. The con­fron­tation on mul­tiple levels between the art of these two unusual artists reveals sur­prising conver­gen­ces as well as an intriguing depth—the abyss their works open up before us.

This exhibition officially laun­ches the cooperation between Raster and the Zofia Rydet Foun­dation, in which our gal­lery will represent Rydet’s work in Poland and abroad.