#Bańka – solo exhibition, 14.05-28.06.2015 SiC! gallery, ul. Kościuszki 9/10, Wrocław

Dirty municipal boxes with electrical connection, transformers and switchgear with remnants of old posters and fragments of graphic tags constitute the major topics of the upcoming exhibition in the SiC gallery focused on the glass installations created by Kalina Bańka.
The exhibition entitled #Bubble consists of nine electrical boxes, which usually ‘disfigure’ the facades of buildings or serve as a sort of ‘canvas’ for local graffiti artists. These unattractive elements of urban reality are turned into personal glass artifacts by Kalina Bańka who works and lives in Wrocław . She constructs them with a metal skeleton and colourful, gaudy glass fronts produced using the traditional technique of stained glass. Bańka (whose last name translates into bubble) uses classic craftsmanship, but she presents it in a new, non-standard context by decorating glass with contemporary urban paintings. The combination of traditional techniques with glass design technology as well as the modern style of her drawings show that mixing the past and the present offers a wide and interesting range of activities.

The stories, symbols and notes applied on glass represent places important to the author. She returns to the addresses, houses, human faces which she eventually brings together to fill the space of the gallery with a kind of timeline or a personal map consisting of her most important memories. Some of the works will allow viewers to visually penetrate the objects from the inside, but if they want to discover what remains hidden there, they will have to wait until the opening of the exhibition. This exhibition is like a blog which clearly and vividly brings us into the world of Kalina Bańka – says Dominika Drozdowska, the curator of the exhibition. We gently open the door, literally and figuratively, to the original, slightly disturbing world.

curator: Dominika Drozdowska