Renata Szyszlak

A long-term member of the C+S art collective, RENATA SZYSLAK studied painting under Prof. Tadeusz Wiktor at the University of Rzeszów. She has held 45 solo exhibitions, and her work has featured in dozens of group exhibitions both in Poland and abroad, including the United Kingdom, Belgium, Slovakia, China, the Czech Republic, Italy, France, Germany, Lithuania, Macedonia, Greece, Ukraine, Spain, Croatia, Tunisia, Algeria, and Serbia. She has developed her own painting technique of layering and thinning lacquers and paints, an approach which has garnered her international attention and won her prestigious awards such as the Grand Prix at “Silver Quadrangle 2012”, the International Painting Triennial of the Carpathian Region.

She has contributed a series of six paintings to the exhibition titled SPACE FOR TRANSFORMATION I – VI, inspired, as she relates, by the life of fungi: “I use the motif of mushrooms to discuss the idea of place as process. Transformation, mutation, the crossing of biological barriers. At a visual level, fungi and their cells have long fascinated me through their organic form and its repetitions, their textures. Mycelia remind me of fractals, and this links them with art, where patterns and growth are key concerns… the mushroom as a metaphor, a symbol of networks, connection, cooperation and unseen systems”. Her explorations of the theme draw on the theories of the Chinese anthropologist Anna Tsing, whose book The Mushroom at the End of the World uses the matsutake mushroom that thrives in disrupted ecosystems as a metaphor for the persistence of life, even after ecological and economic collapse. She also draws attention to the so-called more-than-human world (an expression used in environmental philosophy to define a world which transcends the human environment – in effect, that which encompasses all forms of life), in which humans, animals, plants, fungi and micro-organisms form a mutually interdependent network, and where the “humble mushroom” can become a totem of hope. Renata’s work thus challenges us to perceive the world as a symbiosis – not as a means of production but as an intricate network of relationships where even those elements that seem “useless” can be a source of life: “Fungi might even be the heroes of my narratives about the purification and recovery of the world after a catastrophe (for example, some fungi are able to break down microplastics, while others can neutralize toxins in the environment). She notes that in many cultures “mushrooms are associated with mysticism, with altered states of consciousness and spirituality. In my work, they might represent a gateway to other dimensions – both inner and cosmic. The unpredictable ways in which the cells of a mushroom grow might symbolize the expansion of consciousness, a loss of control, and the opening up of new forms of perception. Fungus is a living material which grows and changes over time, casting doubt on conventional understandings of the artwork as a fixed and unchanging quantity. Mushrooms are instead a symbol of new thinking – networked, holistic, fluid, orientated towards coexistence and transformation”. 

So, let’s delve into the dark mosses growing beneath the surface of Renata’s paintings, touch the stones and wood, reveal the fungi that are the surface of life beneath the surface, the secret realm of the mycelium. Renata Szyszlak is an artist who is able to merge visual sensitivity with scientific and philosophical thinking. Her work fosters a space in which processes can be observed, minute, almost invisible; a record of a system in a constant state of flux, where art is just one of many forms of understanding. 

Edita Vološčuková, project curator