Karolina Jabłońska Sketchbook with heads, 2023

In a self-referential gesture, Karolina Jabłońska's large-scale work presents a painting of her sketch-book, which in turn contains sketches of paintings.

On the left a composition similar to her work Crowd depicts a group of figures, all variations on the artist's generalized self-portrait with identifiable characteristics including a captivating facial expression, large brown eyes, and prominent bushy eyebrows. Despite sharing facial similarities, each character is individually portrayed; some wearing hoods, others wrapped in scarves, and one with tousled hair. On the right is a sketch for a painting with a single figure, also identifiable as the artist, that bears a resemblance to her works Windy Self-Portrait and Primavera.

The painting draws attention to the levels of remove an artwork encapsulates, highlighting the process of arriving at a motif and its composition. In the process, Jabłońska's image becomes a nuanced example of meta-painting, in which a work refers to, and thematizes itself, as well as its own fictiveness. Yet, by depicting a sketch of a produced work alongside an unproduced one, the artist complicates both the very act of referencing and introducing a representation of a sketchbook within the image. By incorporating her own self-portrait and citing herself in Sketchbook with Heads, the work can be understood within the context of an auto-theoretical impulse, a mode of artistic practice that combines theory with autobiography as a means for critical reflection.