ARTEFACT Gallery Presents Self as Solvent by Jagoda Bednarsky

This spring, ARTEFACT Gallery in Berlin presents Self as Solvent, a solo exhibition by Polish-born, Berlin-based painter Jagoda Bednarsky, on view from April 24 to June 25, 2026. Bringing together new paintings and watercolours, the exhibition unfolds as an exploration of identity in flux, where the self is treated not as a fixed construct but as something porous, mutable and perpetually negotiated.

The title gestures toward painting’s own material condition. Solvent dissolves, transforms and reshapes. For Bednarsky, the self operates in much the same way, absorbing and reconfiguring the endless stream of images that define contemporary life. Her practice draws from a vast and fluid archive spanning art history, popular culture and personal memory. Through appropriation and recombination, she dismantles recognisable motifs and rebuilds them into dense, shifting compositions in which images hover on the brink of recognition before dissolving back into colour and movement.

Repetition plays a central role. Bednarsky cites Jorge Luis Borges’ notion that repetition creates order, and within her canvases recurring gestures, colours and forms generate structure from visual excess. What initially appears chaotic reveals a deliberate choreography, where familiarity is destabilised and narratives are quietly rewritten.

A highlight of the exhibition is a new suite of watercolours, marking a significant moment in her practice. Intimate in scale yet conceptually expansive, these works extend her ongoing Shadowland series. At first glance they suggest fountains or rolling landscapes. On closer inspection, they resolve into cascading arrangements of breasts. The imagery is both playful and disarming, confronting conventional ideas of femininity and motherhood while resisting easy categorisation. What appears ordinary becomes charged with layered meaning.

Across the exhibition, themes of self-image, wellness culture, voyeurism and femininity surface alongside fragments that feel theatrical or half-remembered. Bednarsky does not offer definitive statements. Instead, she invites prolonged looking. Meaning accrues gradually, shaped by memory, material and the viewer’s own associations.

Founder Anna Rosa Thomae recalls first encountering Bednarsky’s watercolours over six years ago, describing their quiet humour and luminosity as immediately compelling. Long refined in the artist’s studio, they now take their place within the gallery setting, expanding the conversation around image culture and identity.

With Self as Solvent, ARTEFACT Gallery presents a body of work that feels both analytical and mischievous. In an era saturated with imagery, Bednarsky turns excess into language, probing how repetition, distortion and reinvention shape who we believe ourselves to be.

The exhibition opens with a private preview on April 23 and runs through June 25, with extended hours during Gallery Weekend Berlin from May 1 to 3.