Preview: April 23, 2026 | 6 – 8 PM
On View: April 24 – June 25, 2026
February 26, 2026 (Berlin, Germany) – ARTEFACT Gallery is delighted to announce Self as Solvent, a solo exhibition by Polish-born Berlin-based painter Jagoda Bednarsky, on view from April 24 – June 25, 2026. Alluding to the medium’s inherent solvency, the artist sees the self as fluid and permeable, in a state of constant negotiation. New paintings and watercolor works will be unveiled for the first time, emerging from the artist’s ongoing engagement with a boundless archive of images, exploring the ways they shape memory and desire.
Through a process of appropriation and reconfiguration, Bednarsky draws from art history, popular culture, and personal experience, dismantling familiar visual languages and recombining them into unexpected compositions. Recognizable motifs emerge only to quickly disappear within the dense fields of color and movement. In the dialogue between initial motifs and their transformed iterations, Bednarsky produces works that rethink the stories they reference. The artist expands: “In my paintings, I create order out of disorder through the repetition of motifs, gestures, and colors, following Jorge Luis Borges’s notion that repetition creates order.”
For Self as Solvent, Bednarsky has produced a new suite of watercolors that embody her singular perspective on contemporary experience and visual culture. The exhibition includes new works from the artist’s ongoing Shadowland series, reflecting on conventional notions of femininity and motherhood, while recognizing its natural form. Ranging from grey-toned water fountains to brightly colored compositions resembling hilly landscapes, the works appear ordinary at first, but reveal themselves as breasts arranged in cascading stacks.
Founder of ARTEFACT, Anna Rosa Thomae, reflects, “I first encountered the watercolors a little over six years ago, and was absolutely taken by their intimate humor and luminosity. Quietly perfected in Jagoda’s studio for many years, and I am so honored to now show them at the gallery.”
Throughout her practice, themes of self-image, wellness culture, motherhood, voyeurism, and femininity often intersect with design elements and theatrical fragments that suggest incomplete or imagined narratives. Across this new body of work, Bednarsky transforms the apparent excess of contemporary visual culture into a painterly language of repetition, variation, and reinvention. At once playful and analytical, the works probe the potential of images and their role in the construction of identity, while remaining infinitely open to reinterpretation. One is invited to linger and look beyond first impressions, discovering how meaning emerges gradually through memory, material, and imagination.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
The Emotional Life of Looking will be on view at ARTEFACT from April 24 – June 25, 2026. Special opening hours will be in place during Gallery Weekend Berlin, taking place from May 1 – 3, 2026.
Address
ARTEFACT
Geisbergstraße 12, 10777 Berlin
Opening Times
Monday – Friday | 10 – 6 PM and by appointment.
About Jagoda Bednarsky:
Jagoda Bednarsky (b. 1988, Zlotoryja, Poland) studied at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien, Vienna, Austria before graduating from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany in 2014. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Europe and the United States, including institutional exhibitions at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany; Museum Wiesbaden, Germany; Kunstverein Oldenburg, Germany; Kunstverein Heppenheim, Germany; Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Germany; Museum für Moderne Kunst Zollamt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Kunsthalle Lingen (Ems), Germany; and Kunstverein zu Assenheim, Assenheim-Niddatal, Germany. Bednarksy’s work is featured in the permanent collections of the DekaBank Kunstsammlung, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; and Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku, Danzig, Poland.
About ARTEFACT Gallery:
ARTEFACT is a Berlin-based gallery and project space presenting contemporary art and collectible design. We are dedicated to fostering a dynamic and inclusive community by supporting both emerging and established artists and designers in articulating their unique perspectives. Our collaborators are entrusted with unrestricted creativity, with the freedom to explore, experiment, and express themselves without limitations.
artefact.berlin | @artefactgallery.berlin
Image Credits:
Photo by Felix Kultau, Studio Bednarsky/Kultau