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The uniqueness of Małgorzata Szymankiewicz’s paintings consists in the topology of forms and colours in their simplest variation. The subtle and revealing structure of the paintings sets imagination free, sets it in motion and thus results in surprising interpretations.
Colour and form are the most fundamental and difficult areas of artistic pursuits. This has become clear in the oeuvre of the young artist, who has consistently developed it since 2003, when she was still a student of painting at the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts in Prof. Jerzy Kałucki’s studio. At that time Szymankiewicz used a broad and garish palette. Clearly marked yet non-homogenous forms filled with expressive brushstrokes occupy the central position of the paintings, dissecting horizontally their homogenous surface. In successive works one can observe a gradual abstention from the toxicity of colour.
In the years 2004 - 2005 Szymankiewicz achieves a higher degree of mastery over the structure of composition. The works start to feature new forms, which occupy the better part of the painting. This is also the moment of the emergence of the transparency effect. Works from that period could be seen at a collective show www.kaucki.free.art.pl in the Arsenał in Białystok in 2004 as well as during the 2005 Poznań Art Fair.
The paintings of 2005 show a subdued and markedly narrower colour palette. Most of the works no longer have a composition dominant, which becomes absorbed by the uniform background. “Exposure” becomes replaced with “concealment”. A preponderance of blue hues imparts the colours with a symbolic meaning and makes them the principal subject.
The extremely industrious year 2006, when Szymankiewicz had a solo show in the Arsenał in Białystok, gave rise to cycles that on the face of it resemble Klein’s monochromes, which conceal in their midst mysteries of “water” structures. At the same time the artist pursued another direction, focusing on clearly minimalist compositions. In recognition of the artist’s individual work, she was invited to take part in the show “Polish Painting in the 21st Century”, held in the Warsaw Zachęta (2006 - 2007), as well as in the itinerary exhibition “See, What I See” (Łódź, Toruń, Bielsko-Biała, Poznań 2006 - 2007), gathering the most recent art of Poznań. That year she also exhibited her works during the III Berliner Kunstsalon (Berlin, 2006).
Another stage in Szymankiewicz’s art is an unexpected about-face. In a world where spilled modules supplant formal representation, an intruder appears in the form of a glimmer of a palm-studded landscape, becoming clearer in the shape of a water drop. What is new here is a tinge of criticism, which both as to form and as to content becomes consumed during a solo show MIAMI DREAM (Galeria STARTER, Poznań, 2007).
A totally new suite of paintings made for the project 8780h (XRay Gallery, Luboń n. Poznań 2008) comes as a big surprise. Within a dark palette the artist introduces graphic compositions composed of a decentralising ornament. The kaleidoscopic images are built of skulls and bones, which imply that “(…) Sources of art and sources of culture are to be sought  in the cruelty of the primeval sacrifice (…)”1.
The illusion of a reproduced motif brings to mind also Hermann Rorschach’s psychoanalytic ink test, which equally well sums up the visual aspect of Małgorzata Szymankiewicz’s art. Is this a foretaste of the “Attractions of Abstraction” project? In her most recent series of paintings the artist develops the psychoanalytical and critical strain. The interplay between abstraction and attraction “(…) is a reference to contemporary time, when erotism, which has become sin, can hardly survive in a liberal world, where there is no more sin”2. Szymankiewicz thinks along the same lines when she plays with erotic suggestiveness in her works.

Analysis of the artist’s oeuvre so far shows a conspicuous determination and a pursuit of possibilities to come into contact with uninterrupted colour and form of natural biological logic, which makes her works come close to Olafur Eliasson’s installations. The paintings, made for the most part in 2008, along with those the artist presents at this “Attractions of Abstraction” show, bring me to the art of Gerry Hume. I see an affinity primarily in the subtle game of seemingly anonymous forms of painting, which easily lend to cultural associations.
Szymankiewicz’s intriguing stand seems nearly anarchist with respect to hackneyed “local” artistic paths. Małgorzata Szymankiewicz’s painting introduces into young Polish art a separate trend, a phenomenal counterpoint to the figurative tendencies characteristic of present-day art.

Agnieszka Okrzeja