Karolina Jabłońska Catching a piece of paper, 2025

The work is from a body of work created for the artist's exhibition, Which Way the Wind Is Blowing, at the Start Museum in Shanghai. When conceiving the exhibition, Karolina Jabłońska's had an image in mind from a novel by American writer Ottessa Moshfegh. In the novel “Death in Her Hands”, a woman walking her dog in the woods finds a mysterious note, which sets off a series of reminiscences and events. Jabłońska adopts the narrative device of the note, transforming it into a recurring iconographic motif in this series of paintings. The mysterious shreds of papers in her paintings include both writing and drawings, often blurred by rain or dissolving in puddles of water. Jabłońska appears in some of the paintings, her characteristic likeness with large eyes, expressive eyebrows, and thick brown hair a major theme throughout her work. She returns the spectator's gaze. Sometimes, only her wide-open eyes remain visible on the damp, floating drawings.