Natasza Niedziółka

Interviews by Brainard Carey

Natasza Niedziolka Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly, NewYork/Los Angeles For nearly ten years, Niedziółka has primarily worked with embroidery thread that she applies by hand to stretched canvas. The canvas functions as a support, manufactured by a machine with a regular horizontal and vertical structure, on which the irregular manual stitching of the embroidery can be seen. In their visual appearance, Niedziółka’s works oscillate between textile picture and tapestry. The hatching – in the sense of stitches made close together, most often in a vertical row – is perhaps the most characteristic aspect of these works in which threads are woven into the canvas in a flat chromatic gradation. In their materiality and treatment of color, Niedziółka’s works strive toward immediate sensations: They want to be beheld, for it is only when beholders move in front of the picture that the threads can unfold their entire chromatic spectrum. Seen from the front or from the side, these stitches appear either as separate units or as one dense color field. What appears flat is sometimes revealed to be a loop extending out from the surface; and we can discern how parts of the canvas have been treated with a pigment pen or with ink and wax when we look very closely and recognize their different textures. Her works may therefore explicitly present themselves as pictures, yet their materiality deviates from that of conventional pictures. There is a temporal aspect to be found in the meditative time spent making each work, and there is a chromatic aspect – a curious shimmering of colors that is activated when we move around while looking at the work. And then there is the aspect of the pictures’ appearance, which we can only identify at second glance as embroidered compositions that are non-representational but are always charged with multifaceted associations. Natasza Niedziółka, At One, One&9, 2023-2024, signed, titled and dated by artist, verso, silk thread, crayon on linen, 50 1/8 x 60 11/16 x 1 inches (127.3 x 154.1 x 2.5 cm). © Natasza Niedziółka Courtesy: the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los, Angeles. Natasza Niedziółka, Zero6812, 2023-2024, cotton and silk thread, crayon on linen, 92 1/2 x 135 13/16 inches (235 x 345 cm). © Natasza Niedziółka Courtesy: the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los, Angeles. Natasza Niedziółka, Protest Song (The Bigger Picture), 2023-2024, silk thread, crayon on ryps silk, 110 1/4 x 74 13/16 inches (280 x 190 cm). © Natasza Niedziółka Courtesy: the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los, Angeles.