Biography
Born in Poland, Elwira Skowrońska lives and works in Sydney.
Elwira Skowrońska is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the invisible world of minutiae that underpin our world. Recently awarded the prestigious Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarship, her work investigates a new type of sublime composed of micro infinities, vastly different to the traditional Romantic sublime of large-scale boundless spaces. After completing a Masters degree at National Art School in Sydney she pursued her research into the aesthetics of the nano world with an Artist in Residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris and a Doctorate at Sydney College of the Arts.
Driving her creative processes is a desire to depict this unseen yet ubiquitous nano universe. The work is based on translating recent scientific discoveries such as the Higgs Boson particle into perceptible form. Her nano depictions are created by using a matrix of computer generated graphic particles that are converted into videographic pixels, neo-impressionist painterly points and 3D printed particle sculptures.
Her portfolio includes the public art video work Deep Eclipse: Double Vision that enables the audience to immerse themselves in a vista of pulsating pixel particles. Her computer graphic work Nebula was curatorially selected for exhibition at the ZKM Media Museum, Germany, Europe’s premier digital media museum. It explored the way digitally generated imagery can enhance the way we sensorially experience minutiae. The work was developed across five iterations for esteemed international venues, such as the 25m wide planetarium dome in Experimenta, Heilbronn, Germany and and the Sydney Film Festival. Elwira is currently an Artist in Resident at the UNSW iCinema Research Centre working on the exploration of the microbial world using AI technologies. She is recipient of 2023 Creative Australia Grant to pursue cutting edge technology to explore the world of viruses. The project enables the development of an innovative aesthetic and technological palette to transform her studio practice and facilitate a timely and overdue understanding of the quadrillion+ viral universe that shapes our lives. Elwira is represented by Artereal Gallery in Sydney. She has been a finalist in many Australian Art Prizes.
Artist Statement
Skowrońska’s artwork is informed by recent artistic, philosophical and technological developments. Through a computationally-based approach that engages with digital aesthetics and advances in algorithmic notation, she explores the multi-dimensional physical and virtual nature of spatial infinity. Using an innovative combination of techniques across a range of media including painting, printmaking and video, her works invite the viewer into a world that reimagines the landscape of the sub-visible as a datascape of physical and virtual particles. Grounded in an artistic tradition that investigates the visible world by breaking it down into its smallest components, Skowrońska takes inspiration from the neo-impressionist paintings of Georges Seurat, who investigated the chromatic foundations of pictorial space, and the contemporary digital art practice of Ryoji Ikeda, whose work navigates the nano-scale dimension of particles. Her work is conceptually framed by Immanuel Kant’s exploration of the sublime and Clare Colebrook’s study of sub-atomic space.
By integrating these approaches, Skowrońska transforms painting, prints and video into multi-coloured and multi-dimensional spaces characterised by an optical complexity. Her works evoke an infinity of physical and virtual minutiae that are invisible to the naked human eye—an infinity foreshadowed in the Romantic atmospheric vistas of J. M. W Turner and the numeric conceptual infinities of Roman Opałka. The end result is a body of work that transforms the conventional understanding of the sublime as a large-scale space, revealing instead its underlying micro infinity.
Skowrońska’s works have a powerful resonance, drawing the viewer into a field of unbounded energy. From a distance they appear as tenuous forms, yet as we draw closer we are rewarded with the discovery of a field of highly individuated and saturated dots, conjuring a mysterious space of countless colour particles. In arousing a sense of wonder, her works unlock the sublime nature of minutiae.