“Rather icons than images. Depictions focusing on an individual gesture, an isolated figure, a theatrical setting. Like a single frame removed from a strip of film or the afterimage of a dream. Icons painted in a way to leave no doubt about their visibility, their urgent demand to be regarded. This is how these works occupy your gaze: through stark contrasts or a muddy all-over colouration, a mysterious constellation of things or a seemingly banal scene, confrontational immediacy coupled with a sense of shroudedness. The paintings exercise the power of sensual attraction, which is detached, however, to a large degree, from the accessibility of what they have to say. Zuzanna BARTOSZEK’S paintings stipulate childhood and religiosity as the thematic realm of most of the works, connecting early age to violence, self-doubt, devotion, and the miraculous, while religiosity is linked to a desire to identify with the exemplary sufferer. Her best works succeed in pushing the rawness of applied paint to a point where it is just on the verge of compromising the iconic quality of the painted objects.”

~ Ulrich Loock