Agnieszka Polska

Travels in scale

In her work, Agnieszka Polska shuffles between different positions and perspectives, exploring the complexities of today’s technologised world. By shifting scale, her artworks turn into almost existential exercises: forms and ideas gain new meanings after being transferred to a different environment – what first looks like an incoherent noise can become crystal clear up close, or surprisingly simple from a distance.

Through a poetic voice – sometimes blunt, sometimes tender – Polska reflects on the contradictions of our time: our ability to experience normality and love while man-made catastrophes unfold; the tension between mortality, decay, and the indifference that infiltrates daily routines.

Travels in scale places the visitor back in the role of observer. What position do we take, as individuals and as a collective? And how does the way we look shape how we act?

Her first solo exhibition in The Netherlands, brings together the video works The New Sun and What the Sun Has Seen, both exploring the figure of a witness of the rapid societal changes. Alongside these, a new film shot during King’s Day in Amsterdam, reflects on the scale of the individual in relation to the collective, forming an “imagined community”.

In addition, Polska’s ongoing series Braudel’s Clocks (2022–ongoing) will be on view. These sculptural timepieces follow XX-century historian Fernand Braudel’s idea that unified time is a social construct, and the world is a complex set of structures evolving at various speeds.