Julia MedyńSka

My painting explores the psychology of the individual. Either through small portraits, still lifes, or large scale narratives, I compose environments where characters confront a macabre scene. Each painting constitutes the mood of looming threat and "Dystopian Romanticism". Since childhood, I have faced the struggle between the private drama versus the public persona. I was five years old when my family escaped Poland. Settled in Berlin, the five of us lived in a single room. My domineering grandmother, the family matriarch, was determined to fit in with the affluent Germans and hide our impoverishment. She manipulated her two daughters to climb the social ladder through a series of advantageous and abusive marriages. In order to blend in at a very prestigious private school, I learned to "put on a mask" and hide the embarrassing reality of my home life. In my paintings, I see myself as a film director composing narratives from unrelated source images to develop an uncanny dramatic scene. I search for my “actors” either in vintage black and white photography, film stills or classical painting. Inspired by their body language, I invent a story. Its setting is either taken from a 19th century landscape painting or a film still. What ...

2017 MFA, Columbia University, New York
2013 BA, Columbia University, New York
2003 Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre
2000 The Lee Strasberg Film/Theater Institute

Solo Exhibitions:

2024 SALIGIA, Galeria Art, Warsaw, Poland
2024 Stills, NADA Villa Warsaw, Yulia Topchiy NYC, Warsaw, Poland
2023 Nocturnal Animals, Galeria Kolekcjoner, Kraków, Poland
2023 Nächtliche Streifzüge, Jedlitschka Gallery, Zürich, Switzerland
2022 Family Matters, Centrum Praw Kobiet, Poznań, Poland
2022 Games People Play, artinfo, Warsaw, Poland
2022 What We Left Behind, Galeria ATC, Tenerife, Spain
2022 To, co zostało za nami, Wieża Bramna, Zbąszyń, Poland
2022 Again. , Krakauer Haus, Nürnberg, Germany (duo show with Małgorzata Markiewicz)
2022 lost & found, Modulgalerie, Nürnberg, Germany (duo show with M. Markiewicz)
2022 Queen’s Paradise, Pilipczuk Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
2022 Aurora, Muzeum Lubuskie, Gorzów, Poland, curator Krzysztof Jedrzejczak
2021 Dancing by the Lake, Galeria Art, Warsaw, Poland
2021 Spectacle, Galeria ATC, Tenerife, Spain
2021 Skin as White as Snow, School Gallery, London, UK
2021 Maskarada, Muzeum Ziemi Mie ̨dzyrzeckiej, Miedzyrzecz, Poland


Group Exhibitions:

2025 ZOOOM, Galeria Miejska Arsenał, Poznań, Poland
2021 Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot, Poland, curator Bogusław Deptuła
2021 Summer Shorts, Galeria ATC, Tenerife, Spain
2018 The Visible Light, Menier Gallery, London, UK
2017...