Bettina BEREŚ (b. 1958), Bottles, 2004

oil, canvas; 90 x 65 cm;
Signed and dated p. d.: BB 04 (tied initial, engraved with brush tip);
Inscribed on back: BETTINA BEREŚ / "BOTTLES" 2004 / KRAKÓW / ... - further obliterated (in marker).

Studied art history at Jagiellonian University in 1978-81 and then in 1985-89 organized and ran the Zderzak Gallery in Krakow together with Marta Tarabuła. She has been a member of ZPAP since 1992. In the mid-1990s, she participated in the establishment of the "Otwarta Pracownia" Association and Gallery. She began painting in the 1980s.She has repeatedly exhibited her works in avant-garde Polish galleries. In art, she uses simple language finding subjects around and closest to herself. This is most often the world of objects that used to be used in everyday life, over time have lost their usefulness, displaced by new technology. However, they are kept in every home reminding us of the old days. So in her paintings we see kettles, milk cans, gas bottles, scales, meniscuses and siphons. Shot mostly frontally, they stand motionless in an indefinite, ascetic space where the artist sometimes includes her brief commentary. She lives and works in Krakow.
Selected solo exhibitions: 2005 -Bowls, Witches' Tower, BWA Slupsk; 2005 - Lending
paintings, open-air activity, All-Polish Meetings of Artists, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska; 2005 -.
Exhibition for a silver wedding, Otwarta Pracownia, Cracow; 2006 - Small Things, Kabusa Konsthall,
Köpingebro, Sweden; 2008 - Boli, Mieszkanie 23 Gallery, Kraków; 2010 - Dwie babki, Mieszkanie Gallery.
23, Cracow; 2011 - Engagement Photo, Otwarta Pracownia, Cracow; 2014 - Engagement Photo,
Korekta Gallery, Warsaw; 2015 - Poppies on Main Street, 5th International Festival of Art.
Ephemeral Art "Contexts," Sokolowsko; 2016 - Well Already Been, BWA Olsztyn; 2017 - Feast, Gallery.
Center of NCK, Krakow.
(Source: artemis.art.pl, bettinaberes.pl)

"The painterly images created by the artist dominate the space. Emerging at times directly
from the raw canvas objects with simplified shapes, are like phantoms existing between the ideal
image and the reality of the object. The unpainted linen weaves of threads sting with their reality and brown
ordinariness when juxtaposed with the ambiguous and hazy reality of the painted objects. The paintings become
tools to activate memory without imposing specific events and situations. They evoke
memories, reflexes and non-verbal associations recorded in the experience of the object, which form
into individual stories. The image of the siphon evokes the coolness of the metal, the taste of the water, someone who used it,
the places where it usually stood. Bettina's paintings are like notes from reality. They are a way to zap -
minting fleeting impressions and turning them into small and inconspicuous painterly monuments. The objects
from Bettina's paintings usually stand alone in an indefinite space. Sometimes they are accompanied by a line
horizon, as abstract as the painterly background. Standing in frozen permanence, they appear fragile, distant
and serious. The raw matter of the canvas pins them to reality like titles that seem to strip them of
of mystery and metaphor: "Bowl with Cloth," "Bathtub and Stool," "Sled." The artist cuts off any inclination
viewer to metaphysical readings."
Magdalena Kownacka
(Exhibition catalog: Well Already Done, BWA Olsztyn, 2016)