Karolina Jabłońska Holding a Little Rotten Apple, 2026

This intimately-scaled oil on wood by Karolina Jabłońska depicts a cupped hand holding a single decaying apple against a black ground. Painted on one of the small wooden panels that Jabłońska primes and polishes herself, the work reflects her pleasure in the slow, devotional labor first learned from panels used for icon painting. Barely larger than a human hand, it carries the stillness of a Cézanne-like portrait of things. Deeply felt and keenly observed, the painting captures the paradoxes of preservation, the wish to keep against the certainty of decline. As the artist has put it, “the paintings come from small sensory and emotional impressions.” Yet the personal is also political: inherent in these metaphors for emotional states are references to the role of women, the existential threat to their bodies, and restrictions imposed by political realities.