Drfit

Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix is pleased to announce Drift, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Magda Stawarska.
Stawarska presents one of her most ambitious solo presentations to date, showcasing ten new works across various media. Split across the gallery’s two floors, each with distinct installation, Drift presents viewers with a spellbinding view of the visual rhythms that constitute the ebb and flow of various cityscapes. Through painting and photography; etching, silkscreen print and slide projection, Stawarska reveals how one fashions a personal relationship to place—layering histories of memory and movement, absence and restitution via patterns that wrap horizontally and vertically across the gallery walls.
Drift builds upon Stawarska’s signature artistic approach—of self-exploring cities, allowing herself to get lost, only to return—a practice akin to that of flaneur. Often accompanied on these journeys with discreet recording equipment; the recordings are adapted, shared with select listeners, annotated, and re-exposed to the world in multi-layered form, revealing the contradictions within the geo-politics of a given urban sphere. This process of revelation is what Stawarska calls the act of “inner listening”.
On the ground floor, Stawarska presents works largely inspired by the maritime hues, the abundant humidity, and air of a coastal city that evokes memories of an Andalucía. Here, dreams unfold as a horizontal line, in various shades of blue, green and lilac extends across the walls of the gallery, punctuated by large paintings and small monochrome prints.
This play with multiple cityscapes continues downstairs. The film, visually taking place in Łódź and sonically in Bologna and Pisa, revolves around a conversation with the painting of torn tarpaulin in Venice. This scene interleaves with a slide projection of shop carts and stalls, wrapped in fabric on a city street in Sharjah, deploying her process of ‘inner listening’,