Agnieszka Brzeżańska works in painting, video and photography. Her practice is marked by a performative quality to making. It constantly cross-references bodies of knowledge from science to philosophy, desire to spirituality. The work brings together a complex array of influences, which are rarely explicit and allow the work to open itself to heterogeneous components.

A photograph of herself or another figure, where the making of the work formally gets in the way of the image. A painting of and in shadows, where the body flows into the work it is making. Patterns emerge everywhere. From something as ephemeral as the shadow of her own reflection, a perception of her embodied self, to the Theory of Everything sought in particle physics. From the murmuration of birds in flight to platonic solids and essential geometrical forms. While appearing to be abstract, Agnieszka’s paintings contain intensities, flows and energies found in nature, that are often invisible or transient.

The exhibition owes its title to Alex, an African Grey Parrot. By the time Alex died in 2007 he had acquired a vocabulary of more than one hundred words. More than merely repeating taught words, he appeared to engage in conversations. He responded to his encounters with an unprecedented, sophisticated dialogue. He had an ability to distinguish and articulate materials, tastes, colours, and could even sort and count types of objects. He was sufficiently self-aware to know that he was grey. His relationship to language was not simply learned ‘parrot fashion’, as we might say, but also self-generated, and responsive. He practiced while he was alone and perhaps even more significantly he was inventive with his use of language, combining words into new portmanteau forms when he did not have he correct word within his vocabulary.

The night before he died his last words were, ‘I love you. Be good.’

Agnieszka Brzezanska was born in 1972 in Gdansk. She lives and works in Warsaw and Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Nomas Foundation, Rome, 2012, Kunsthaus Baselland and DAAD Galerie, Berlin in 2010. Her monograph, L’artiste, le modèle et la peinture was published in 2010 by Sternberg Press.