Pleasure, contrary to what we usually imagine, is not only a sensation but a state shaped by physiology and fantasy. Pleasure – understood as a practice – invites us to sink into daydreams. It resists categorisation: it can be elusive, tempting, demanding, unbearable, tasteful, or voracious. In this way, it encourages us to oppose the all-embracing reality built on judgement and visuality. The essence of Pleasure is the act of pursuing its fulfilment; at the same time, it is tactfulenough to offer us tools for its own satisfaction.
The exhibition „Within herself, she is already two” presents works by six artists: Lera Dubitskaya, Olga Dyjak, Mrozia11, Patrycja Płóciennik, Sylwia Walczowska, and Inga Wójcik, curated by Weronika Kocewiak. Each invited artist offers a different perspective
on the moment of losing oneself in Pleasure:
Lera Dubitskaya creates a world of fantasy in which the body is offered to flora and fauna. At times it disappears there; at others it submerges only partially. In doing so, she blurs the boundary between the unity of depicted bodies and the real world, which obliges us to maintain a single, fixed bodily form. In her paintings, the body becomes ephemeral, fairytale-like, and capable of self-transformation and sublimation into its own imagined world.
Olga Dyjak paints in the rhythm of bodily movement. She presents sensual experiences where imagined nature merges with somatic perception. Her painting is a form of listening – to the external temptations of flora and fauna and to internal impressions. The structure of the body becomes a texture she freely uses to depict nature.
Mrozia11 builds identity through autoerotic union and the destruction of archetypal symbols of masculinity (e.g., the snake, the lion). The power of her works lies in capturing the body at its limit states – in aggressive, and at times transcendental, erotic pleasure.
Patrycja Płóciennik represents a regime of self-pleasure realised through repetitive gestures. For her, fulfilment is connected to the economy of life – the status of randomness disappears; instead, a primal need for routine prevails, a search for pleasure within the safe loop of day and night, where time does not exist and stilled objects – a tablecloth, a used teabag, or a solitaire game frozen mid-deal – will not change anymore.
Sylwia Walczowska shapes a reality built from a self-crafted natural environment composed of elements of nature. It is a world grounded in fantasy – jewellery, flowers, or furniture made from shells and snail husks. The artist allows herself to sink into the pleasure of nature’s gifts, at times merging with them in erotic union.
Inga Wójcik paints her surrounding reality through the use of diagrams – mathematical, physical, and biological structures. In this way, she outlines a space that is both unlimited and defined by the artist herself. She presents a Pleasure without boundaries, eagerly seeking expansiveness.
This exhibition – in contrast to passive consumption of everyday life – aims to reveal the essence of Pleasure and the experience of losing oneself in the transgressive creation of in-between worlds: those real and imagined, invented and intrusive.
Among the works are intimate confessions, the effects of unrestrained action, and representations of everyday temptations. Their combination forms the result of a process whose outcome is a story about the power of fantasy and surrender. The gathered artists allow themselves to touch selected primal needs: consuming the self, the drive to return to inanimate
matter, or the search for bodily identity through the creation of personal micro-worlds into which they invite us. Here, the creative process takes on a liminal dimension – containing elements of suffering, searching, and repetition – and highlights the fact that Pleasure is not a permanent state, and that its epicentre lies within us. The exhibition presents artists who do not accept the
world as it is given to them, but instead allow themselves to unleash fantasy.
¹ The exhibition title comes from a quote by Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (2010).
Full quote: “Woman “touches herself” all the time, and moreover no one can forbid her to do so, for her
genitals are formed of two lips in continuous contact. Thus, within herself, she is already two – but not
divisible into one(s) – that caress each other.”