
Echoes is a meditation. The exhibition invites us into a space where symbols reverberate across time and evolve in unexpected ways. Religious iconography and archetypal narratives endure in the human psyche, finding embodiment in the form of tattoos and wounds, leaving an imprint upon both the body and soul. Tattoos were once symbols of culture and identity, but here, they are transfigured into living echoes. These marks carry stories but are also reimagined in a new light, asking the question: what happens when the sacred is redefined?
In Chapel (2024), a woman’s back becomes the site of transformation. A medieval Black Madonna, adorned with ribbons like roadside Polish chapels, emerges on the woman's body, distorted by the multitude of scratches in her skin. This sacred image, once confined to a wood panel, fuses with flesh in a quiet rebellion. Solace (2024) deepens this exploration of embodiment and reinvention. A face gazes outward, and a sorrowful yet serene expression is combined with a stream of tears across her face. The past does not merely resurface in these works. It fractures and resists stillness.
The artist renders faces and bodies in hyper realistic detail and startling precision. These figures are not just present and real but more so than reality itself – an intensified, heightened existence. As Baudrillard suggests, hyperrealism does not reflect reality but instead creates its own “improved” version that surpasses the real. Nienartowicz’s figures occupy this space. They become carriers of images that have shaped cultural and religious consciousness for centuries, yet their meaning is reinterpreted. Transformed into tattoos, historic artworks are removed from their original context, granting them a new one. In this way, the artist raises the question of what will remain of the sacred when placed in the vulgar context of a tattoo. These living icons create a palpable tension, sparking a dialogue between the image and its symbolic meaning, the past and present, and the body’s own narrative.
Echoes is Agnieszka Nienartowicz’s second solo exhibition with Nicodim and her first in New York.
– Ryan Castle
Agnieszka Nienartowicz’s (b. 1991, Jelenia Góra, Poland) hyper-realistic oil paintings exude sensuality and mystery in tranquil and intimate settings. Her depictions of tattooed women reference and recontextualize works from the Renaissance, Old Master, and religious movements.
Nienartowicz lives and works in Kraków, Poland. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in 2016. Exhibitions include Echoes, Nicodim, New York (2025, solo, forthcoming); DISEMBODIED curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); The Landscape of Polish Painting, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2024); Agnieszka Nienartowicz: Sweet Burden, Nicodim Annex, Los Angeles (2023, solo); MATERNITY LEAVE: NONE OF WOMEN BORN curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim in collaboration with the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Longing for Another World, Pilipczuk Gallery, Copenhagen (2022, solo); The Hardest is to Feel Free, BWA Gallery, Jelenia Gora (2021, solo).