Urszula Śliz/ Traho. Non-drawings

Urszula Śliz/ Traho. Non-drawings / 22.01.2026 - 18.02.2026

On 22 January, Urszula Śliz’s solo exhibition opens at the City Gallery. For many years, the artist has consistently explored questions concerning the boundaries and specificity of different artistic territories. In the exhibition Traho. Non-drawings, she explores the broadly understood concept of drawingness.

In her works on display, Urszula Śliz seeks to determine what drawing might be beyond its own medium. For the artist, the titular non-drawings are not an act of negation, but an expansion of the definition. The word traho (Latin, first person singular of the verb trahere), which refers to the classical understanding of drawing as the act of ‘pulling out’ a line, points to action, emphasising the processual and physical nature of drawing.

The starting point for the works assembled in the exhibition is the practice of automatic drawing, which allows the artist to approach the medium as both a mental and bodily process. Consequently, in this cycle of Śliz’s work, the fundamental element of drawing – the line – becomes a natural materialisation of energy accumulated in the body, while at the same time conforming to rationalised structures and rhythms. Balancing on the boundary between intention and chance, the artist draws on the metaphor of weaving, of weft and warp. The tensions formed between the vertical and the horizontal function in her works as a relationship between order and its disruption.

Marek Śnieciński writes about Urszula Śliz’s latest work as follows: Once again, it must be emphasised that in the ‘Traho. Non-Drawings’ cycle, drawing is not the goal, nor is ‘techne’ itself. The various techniques and technologies employed by the artist serve only to construct a territory in which questions may resonate — questions of order and its disruption, of entropy, which is both our way of describing reality and the laws that govern it, and an existential, corporeal experience.

The opening takes place on 22 January (Thursday) at 6:00 pm

The exhibition will be on view until 18 February.

Curator: Mirosław Jasiński