Residency Unlimited program

September 22, 2024 – October ​22, 2024

New York Notebook — ​exhibition and conversation with RU resident ​Bianka Rolando

Thursday, October 17​​ at ​6:00 PM
Exhibition on view​ from 2:00 PM that day
Residency Unlimited​
360 Court Street​, Brooklyn, ​NY ​11231
Free admission: register here

A conversation between RU resident artist Bianka Rolando and curator, producer, and writer Jesse Bandler Firestone. Together they will discuss Bianka’s mixed media practice that explores translation, freedom, and ambiguity. Through references to sci-fi movies, architecture, linguistics, and the artist’s work, they will probe questions surrounding ideas of meaning-making, nothingness, cosmic jokes, and the search for connection.

Bianka Rolando is an artist, poet and professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Her works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Polish Institute in Rome, at the Kunsthalle Bratislava and in Galeria Foksal, among others.

She is an author of nine books of poetry. Her artwork combines different types of media in the unique language of artistic expression. In parallel to her artistic work, she writes – not commentaries on art, but rather foundations for her artistic projects. The works present dreamy afterglows, scenes from dreams, or frame reality in such a way that it turns out to be vague in its unveilings. The visual language that defines errors in defining what is depicted precisely so that a liberating poem emerges. They are not proof of achieving some goals but rather testify to the mere passion for traveling and transformation.

Bianka Rolando’s selected most solo exhibitions include: Milk Can Escape at the Foksal Gallery, Warsaw (2024); Rol- A- Top- Twin- Jack Pot at the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Ustka (2023); Keel and Dolphin (2019) at the Foksal Gallery, Warsaw (2019); and Reversed Triumphzug at the Arsenal Municipal Gallery, Poznań (2016).

Bianka Rolando’s selected solo exhibitions include: Milk Can Escape at the Foksal Gallery, Warsaw (2024); Rol- A- Top- Twin- Jack Pot at the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Ustka (2023); Keel and Dolphin (2019) at the Foksal Gallery, Warsaw (2019); and Reversed Triumphzug at the Arsenal Municipal Gallery, Poznań (2016).

During her month-long residency at Residency Unlimited Brooklyn, New York, Bianka Rolando will work on a project called The New York Notebook. Despite this short time, the artist intends to carry out a completely new artistic project in which she reinterprets the New York Dadaists and The New York School poets (the cross-pollination between writing and visual art) in the context of the city. This project will consist of drawings, and paintings in the context of questions about the condition of contemporary art. Rolando will create a series of works depicting NYC with fragments of poetic commentary. The core of this project is the city. Combining poetry with visual arts is a way to convey a solid ground to explore and understand the city of dreams, a mirage of possibilities, which the artist is searching for in her explorations.

An exhibition The New York Notebook, combined with a discussion about works created during New York residency between Residency Unlimited resident artist Bianka Rolando and curator Jesse Bandler Firestone, will take a place on October 17. During the panel discussion, artist will talk about her mixed media practice that explores translation, freedom, and ambiguity.

Artist Name: Bianka Rolando
Residency Dates: September – October 2024
Born: Warsaw, Poland
Lives & Works: Poznań, Poland
URL: biankarolando.com | Instagram: @rolandobianka
Gallery: Foksal Gallery, Warsaw
Education:
2024 | Art Professorship, Adam Mickiewicz University, PL
2022 | Professor/ Lecturer at the School of Form, Adam Mickiewicz University, PL
2011 | Ph.D. in Visual Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, Adam Mickiewicz University, PL

Bianka Rolando’s residency is made possible with support from the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

Lead image: “A Cave”, 2023, acrylic+oil on canvas, photo by Bianka Rolando