Agata Kus

AGATA KUS (b. 1987). A graduate and PhD holder from the Faculty of Painting at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where she earned her diploma in 2012 under Professor Leszek Misiak and completed her doctoral degree in 2018. She is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including first place in the Kompas Młodej Sztuki ranking (2021), the Kazimierz Ostrowski Award (2024), and the Grand Prix at the WRO International Media Art Biennale (2015).

Her artistic practice focuses primarily on painting, while also successfully incorporating drawing, ceramics, video, and spatial forms.   Her paintings are characterized by extraordinary technical mastery, a rich color palette, and narrative complexity, where precise figuration blends with formal experimentation—such as collaged textures, embroidery, or deliberate destruction of the canvas surface.

The central themes of her work revolve around interpersonal relationships, the psychology of coming of age, and depictions of young women portrayed within settings laden with subtext and symbolism. These depictions often refer to daily situations, private rituals, and pop-culture clichés, which on her canvases transform into disquieting, almost surreal phenomena. Agata Kus's paintings serve as a dense, multi-layered visual record of reality, in which key motifs include corporeality, the oppressive weight of social roles, and intense emotional states.

The artist analyzes the position and vulnerability of the individual in the contemporary world, confronting the viewer with their defencelessness alongside an underlying strength and mystery. She imbues her works with an aura of psychological tension and dark enigma, often intentionally disrupted by grotesquerie, dark humor, and irony. Her oeuvre balances between classical painting and contemporary aesthetics, drawing visual inspiration from cinema, comic strips, fairy tales, and digital iconography.

Agata Kus has held numerous solo exhibitions, including "Promises" at the State Art Gallery in Sopot (2026), "First Time" at the MCSW Elektrownia in Radom (2024), "Horror Picture Show" at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery in Kraków (2019), as well as collaborative projects shown at the Thomas Erben Gallery in New York and Maëlle Galerie in Paris.

Her works are included in major institutional and public collections (including the MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, the National Museum in Gdańsk, Bunkier Sztuki, and the mBank Collection) and are regularly exhibited internationally and at major art fairs.  

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