An Interview With Aleksandra Niemczyk
Aleksandra Niemczyk is a contemporary artist known for her abstract paintings and films. Based between Oslo and London, her vibrant works explore the interplay of color, texture, and materiality. Through her innovative use of textiles and mixed media, Niemczyk creates immersive visual experiences that invite viewers to engage with her art on a sensory level. Her practice is a testament to her dedication to experimentation and her ability to push the boundaries of abstract painting.
Can you tell us a little bit about you?
I am a painter, a print maker, and a film artist born in Warsaw, based between Oslo and London, and occasionally venturing out to art residencies around the world. As I go I collect visual inspirations, stories, objects, and textiles to use in my work and I come across amazing people to collaborate with. I am pushed and pulled between fine arts and filmmaking. Painting is a meditative, static process in solitude, where all choices depend solely on me, where filmmaking is dynamic, social and symbiotic with others. At the moment, I am focusing on painting, slowly developing my next film in the background.
How has your artistic style or approach changed over time?
Coming from a rather traditional art education (MA in Fine Arts 2001), I started with figurative forms and landscapes, slowly reducing the narrative and focusing in on form and colour as my style became more abstract. Inspired by Matisse and Cezanne, I started to simplify my figures into geometrical shapes, although early on they still indicated their origin. A big shift happened around 2007-2009 when I had the chance to study and paint in New York and became obsessed with the grid of the geometrical urban landscape and American abstract painting movement. The squares and geometry took over my forms, but colour-wise, the paintings from that period were mainly black and white and gold. In 2016, I had an opportunity to work in Tokyo, with a Tokyo Wonder Site Artist Residency, and to study Japanese textile art, like the art of boro, silk painting, and printing. This brought colour back to my expression.
Have you been exploring any new themes in your more recent work?
I’m continuing the path of my textile-inspired grid paintings, researching more and more dye pigments and forms used in ancient folk textiles around the world. The use of colours and forms were often full of meaning, and not only aesthetic choice. I am fascinated with this colour coding and am implementing my conclusions from my research into new abstract paintings.
What are some of the primary media that you use in your abstract work and how do you aim to build a sense of tactility?
I experiment a lot with textiles, like canvas, silk, cotton, paper, thick layers of oil or acrylic paint, asphalt and gold leaf, to build out of the flatness of the canvasses. My work feels like I am organizing the space in front of me, starting with one colour and form that I am obsessed with at the moment. Then going back and forth painting colour forms around and over and on top of each-other, re-painting them again and again to find a perfect balance. This process deepens and inter-penetrates the layers and brings a sense of tactility as an outcome.
What is the importance of form and color in your work?
The first impression of my work is a grid, a compilation of geometrical patches of colour. The vibration between these patches changes depending on the surrounding colours. I am fascinated with this co-dependence. Sometimes I work with opposite colours that complement each other in the right proportion, while other cycles entail monochromatic research of the vibration of one specific family of colours. It’s all a very intuitive process.
Does your filmmaking practice inform or influence your painting practice, or vice versa?
My filmmaking feeds on my art practice, bringing obsession with colour and tactility to my set design, but also the need for layers in my narration style and gravity towards abstraction and magic reality. Also, my film language is not built on the word; it’s built on the image. The image carries the storytelling. My film practice brought to my painting a higher awareness of space and light, and the importance of untold nuances that happen between lines, forms and colour.
Your earliest memory of art?
That is actually a brilliant question. I didn’t think of this painting for a long time but I know the answer right away: “The Last Judgment”, a triptych by Flemish painter Hans Memling. My parents had a beautiful art album dedicated to this painting, analysing it in the smallest detail. I was studying it over and over before I could even read. Looking at it now, it’s amazing how much influence it has on my work, regardless of how abstract that influence has become.
Who are the artists or creators who have had the greatest impact on your work?
That is a complex question, as I am changing and discovering new amazing artists as I develop. To keep it brief and chronological, I started being fascinated with Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard and evolved further through fascination with Joseph Albers, Frank Stella and Antoni Tapies. Film wise it is Sergei Parajanov, Béla Tarr and Chantal Akerman.
What is your favourite book or film and why?
My favourite film is “Werckmeister Harmonies” by Béla Tarr, my teacher and mentor. Why? It makes me at times breathless with the use of time, rhythm, visual narration, light and darkness, and above all the painful truth about human condition. As for book, anything written by Haruki Murakami. He abstracts understanding of linear time and reality in a very magical way.
Are you working on any new projects you are particularly excited about?
Yes. Always. Right now, I’m working on a cycle of large canvases depicting the meaning and vibration of prime colour pigments combined with recycled, found textiles.