AGNIESZKA SZTEJERWALD | self-control

Galeria Elektor

🗓️ 29.01.2026–13.03.2026

🎨 opening 29.01.2026 at 19:00

Accessibility:

• the exhibition will be adjusted in height for wheelchair users
• induction loop at the opening and available on request during the exhibition
• Polish Sign Language interpretation

Curator: Anna Szyjkowska-Piotrowska

We begin 2026 at Galeria Elektor with Agnieszka Sztejerwald’s exhibition “Self-control”. In the exhibition, the artist treats painting as a tool for introspection and working with emotional tension. Painting becomes a record of bodily and psychological experience, and the creative process gains importance equal to the final form. The artist confronts the external world with internal fears and imaginations, creating intimate, emotional portraits devoid of literalness and narrative stability.

The exhibition is not a collection of autonomous objects but a space of experience in which image and body mutually permeate. “Self-control” becomes a meeting place — demanding, intimate, sometimes uncomfortable — where control is not a goal but a starting point for deeper reflection on what is ambiguous, changeable, and hard to grasp.

Agnieszka Sztejerwald — an artist born in 1994 in Warsaw. She works in painting, photography, and video art. In 2020 she graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In the years 2029–2020 she received the rector’s scholarship for the best students. Her diploma “Hating the Image” was included in the ASP COMING OUT exhibition of best diplomas in 2020. Her work addresses autobiographical, personal, and intimate themes, which she frames as painted (often self-portraits) and photographic portraits. She treats the process as equally important as the final work — this allows her to break away from routine, repetitive everyday functioning. She confronts the external image with an introverted world of fears and imaginations. “I paint to transcend myself, seeking an appropriate expression for emotions; that matters more to me than reproducing reality. Each canvas is an emotional portrait — an honest, intuitive journey into intimacy.”

Selected exhibitions: “Femme avec un serpent” (Herisson, France 2025, Musee d’Art de Contemporian de Herisson); Artland Antwerp Expo (21.12–24.02.2024; Antwerp; Galerie Verbeck Van Dyck), “Fruits from the deep sea” (Antwerp, 2024 Galerie Verbeeck Van Dyck), “Inaczej niż w Raju” (Galeria Żak, Gdańsk 2023), “Hating the Image” (Nowosądecka Mała Galeria 2021), “H.A!” exhibition in duo with Helena Stiasny (Ośrodek Kultury Śródmieście, 2020), “Matki Niepodległości” (ASP 2020), “Castaways of Meaning” (Galeria Salon Akademii, 2029), “100/40” (ASP 2029), “Wihajster/Freitag/Swallow” (Galeria Salon Akademii, 2027). Since 2022 she co-creates the Time New Roman art collective with Jakub Słomkowski and Dawid Wojtalewicz. From December 2024 to March 2025 she realized the project “Obrazy obsesji / The images of obsession. Loving the image” as part of the Small Artistic Residency of the Mazovian Institute of Culture.