Agata

Rek

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Agata Rek is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in collage, photo manipulation, and portrait photography. Her work is nostalgic and graphic, with organic forms and monochromatic palettes. Formally trained as an architect, she meticulously balances, intersects, and contracts images to create visual metaphors and enigmatic characters.

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"I create a visual narrative from the desire to communicate. The collage technique is my current medium of choice. My work becomes a documentation of perceptions of the external and internal world, ultimately showcasing my evolution as a human being or more modestly speaking as an artist. I like to explore the unpredictable nature of assembling preexisting imagery. To me, it’s not just a relationship between the subjects within the piece but a metaphor that tells a story. I crave to create something permanent from something disposable. By literally breaking images from their original context, they become free to convey a new message."

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"Creation is my pressure release system, a way of grounding me. Instead of weighing things down in my head, I give them a physical space where they are born and take on a new life and meaning. It also teaches me to cultivate the love of the process, not just the final result. Meticulously sliced pieces are often guided by the tension between the beauty and the agony of life. Having experience working with design, photography, and art I curate my cutout into pieces inserting the human body and shapes into mysterious or surreal contexts. I create in chaos and always with a couple of pieces at a time."

"That’s why, I believe, my collages have opposite directions, clean forms, shapes, and composition directing my attention to symbolism and clarity towards the objects I am choosing. I believe it has also to do with my education as an architect where I was trained to be precise and particular. I like to keep my art in monochromatic shades if possible, putting the subject at the first plan to not dominate by the colors too much unless I have no other materials to choose from or I like to express happy emotions. My senses are always aware of everything I am surrounded with. My intention is to inspire those who see my work, provoke discussion, and look more carefully at the world around them rediscovering themselves and looking deeper into emotions and what confronts them to become better human beings."

Agata Rek

Agata Rek was born in 1981 in Poland. She currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon.