Karolina Jabłońska Flying sketches, 2024

In a self-referential gesture, Karolina Jabłońska's large-scale work presents pages of her sketchbook that have been ripped and torn, floating in the sky as if they had been thrown in the air. The sketches present on the ripped remains of her work, are variations of the artists self-portraits or her identifiable characteristics such as her large brown eyes, curly hair, mouth, and captivating facial expression. The sky which envelops the fragments of sketches is dark blue with shades of grey, showing visible signs of rain through the small and rhythmic water droplets falling throughout the work. The rain in the painting is not limited to the setting of the work, but rather, raindrops are drawn in the rips of sketchbook floating in the somber cloudy sky. The bottom left paper fragment shows the artists mouth, down-turned, portraying a sense of tragedy as tears stream down her cheeks. These drops are featured in almost all the sketches floating through the air, matching the scenery of a rainy day.

The painting draws attention to the levels of remove an artwork encapsulates, highlighting the process of arriving at a motif and its composition. In the process, Jabłońska's image becomes a nuanced example of meta-painting, in which a work refers to, and thematizes itself, as well as its own fictitiousness. By incorporating her own self-portrait and citing herself in the ripped remains of her original sketches the work can be understood within the context of an auto-theoretical impulse, a mode of artistic practice that combines theory with autobiography as a means for critical reflection.