BIO
WORKS
STATEMENT
NEWSLETTER
Wonder Garden
Desert
Martyna Benedyka is a visual and sound artist, painter, photographer, coloratura soprano, and teacher. Working in a wide range of media including painting, film and digital photography, collage, site-specific installation, video and sound art, she focuses on human voice and existence, nature, and the clandestine life of objects.
She studied Art and Design at the Gray’s School of Art in Scotland, UK and graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art Painting in 2014. She has exhibited in the UK, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Czechia, Romania, Estonia, Switzerland, South Korea, Canada and the USA.
Her work has been chosen by the Federation of British Artists for the Futures - UK’s largest annual survey of emerging contemporary figurative art at the Mall Galleries, London, among others. Recent projects include: Classix Festival (winner 2022), DongGang Photo Festival (winner 2022-23), or De Structura Project (winner 2022-23). She is a member of Futures Photography, Amsterdam, NL (winner 2022). She specializes in early and classical music.
She studied Art and Design at the Gray’s School of Art in Scotland, UK and graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art Painting in 2014. She has exhibited in the UK, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Czechia, Romania, Estonia, Switzerland, South Korea, Canada and the USA.
Her work has been chosen by the Federation of British Artists for the Futures - UK’s largest annual survey of emerging contemporary figurative art at the Mall Galleries, London, among others. Recent projects include: Classix Festival (winner 2022), DongGang Photo Festival (winner 2022-23), or De Structura Project (winner 2022-23). She is a member of Futures Photography, Amsterdam, NL (winner 2022). She specializes in early and classical music.
Before The Mirror
Portrait (Beauty)
2014-
On The Border
What is a photograph? For me, a fragment of quick-silver,
a lucid dream, a scribbled note from the subconscious
to be deciphered, perhaps, over years.
It is a monologue trying to become a conversation,
an offering, an alibi, a salute.
a lucid dream, a scribbled note from the subconscious
to be deciphered, perhaps, over years.
It is a monologue trying to become a conversation,
an offering, an alibi, a salute.
Eva Rubinstein
On The Border is a tribute to silence that always exists on the
verge of disappearing. The interactions between the images with
their connections, serve as the border between visible and
clandestine fragments.
The uncanny stillness in movement challenges the idea of where we are at the exact time and place, which is not like any other time and place. In the feeling of solitude and quiet, this visual story takes us to the unknown capturing the familiar.
Text: Martyna Benedyka
Artist photobook accompanying
the Open Your Eyes exhibition
at Gray’s School of Art, Scotland, UK
Gelatin Silver Print
The Sublime
2023
Another source of the sublime is infinity; if it does not rather belong to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime. There are scarce any things which can become the objects of our senses, that are really and in their own nature infinite. But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were really so. We are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of some large object are so continued to any indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check which may hinder its extending them at pleasure. Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort of mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to operate.
After whirling about, when we sit down, the objects about us still seem to whirl. After a long succession of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat and the waters roar in the imagination long after the first sounds have ceased to affect it; and they die away at last by gradations which are scarcely perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole, with your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a length almost incredible.
Place a number of uniform and equidistant marks on this pole, they will cause the same deception, and seem multiplied without end. The senses, strongly affected in some one manner, cannot quickly change their tenor, or adapt themselves to other things; but they continue in their old channel until the strength of the first mover decays.
(1757)
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
The concept of the sublime in philosophical aesthetics and art history is mainly understood as the quality of greatness. Edmund Burke, an Irish-born philosopher, claimed that the sublime is the most powerful experience. He also argued that sublimity and beauty were mutually exclusive. Burke presented his theory that beautiful objects are small and delicate, while sublime ones are dark and terrifying. Fascinated by this concept, I have chosen a series of different-sized paintings which touch on themes of monumentality as an aura of greatness, and little beauties in our lives that are inseparable from their fragility.
One of the sources of sublimity is infinity. Exploring the infinite, we experience a deeper, often unforgettable, sense of wonder. Here, the infinity is realized through cropped compositions, blackness, repetition, and the potential to evoke a mixture of emotions and feelings in the viewer.
According to Burke, beauty brings relaxation and sublimity brings tension. The paradox of the sublime arises when we find peace in the things that overwhelm us. Both captivate us, despite the dangers. I decided to express the sublime and the infinite, referring to the sense and power of the image in the real world. Depriving it of details, a rather enigmatic selection of paintings evoke notions of the sublime as an aesthetic experience and a monumental vision that strikes the viewer with power and raises the boundless question of whether the sublime in art can coexist with beauty.
(2023)
Martyna Benedyka
Peephole, 2023
oil on wood
Image: Martyna Benedyka
oil on linen
Image: Martyna Benedyka
Ceramic Mushroom, 2022
oil on linen
Image: Martyna Benedyka
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
The Paradox Of The Sublime, 2023
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
Woman, 2014
oil on wood
Image: Martyna Benedyka
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
Why The World Looks The Way It Does (Conversation II), 2021-22
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
Queen, 2023
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
Two Sisters, 2017-18
oil on wood
Image: Martyna Benedyka
Fragility (Primitive Plant), 2017-18
oil on wood
Image: Martyna Benedyka
Portrait (Beauty), 2023
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
The Art Of Singing, 2023
oil on canvas
Image: Martyna Benedyka
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Experience Peace
2022
︎ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNehqXs0ItM
︎ https://vimeo.com/774419357
︎ https://soundcloud.com/martyna-benedyka/experience-peace
In light of current war events, I wanted to create a piece that would express the feelings
of those in potential danger. Some people feel safer than
others.
Some manage to forget about the war. But we are all in
a state of limbo. I decided to examine this state in my work. This
work, which includes an aria from Georg Friedrich Haendel's
first oratorio called "The Triumph of Time and Disillusion",
aims
to trigger memory and bring the past times.
Voice, sound recording and moving image: Martyna Benedyka
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︎︎︎
2022-2024
Don't Forget You're Going To Die
Don’t Forget You’re Going To Die is a photographic story project, inspired by so-called killed negatives (negatives of rejected images that were punctured with a hole puncher) by American photographers that were systematically destroyed in the 1930s.
The collection I am building is personal, almost intimate, and very broad at the same time. The idea behind this project is finding the metaphor for the unexplained and incomplete; in objects, nature, people and situations.
Whereas a picture usually documents reality, it can also hide it, so that it becomes inaccessible and the only thing we can do is interpret, like dreams, which in the end is just speculation.
On The Sea
Family Portrait
Courtyard With Shadow
Guest Room
Double Portrait
Harp
Tina
Three-Legged Chair
Tribute