We wish for peace of mind more often than we actually experience it. Its unattainability seems obvious to us, and free time has become a luxury. Work overwhelms us, and tasks remain unfinished. When there are too many, we unintentionally carry them with us into the night, into bed, letting them claim even more territory.

Agata Popik’s dreams are haunted by work in all its forms. She dreams of finishing tasks, recalls deadlines, jobs, and assignments. Sometimes, the space in her dreams takes the shape of endless office corridors. She gets lost in them, searching for an escape from employers or professors from the Academy. If they catch her, she’ll drown in work, revisions, and corrections. While fleeing, she grabs at door handles. If she’s lucky, she finds an escape from the labyrinth in a random door leading to the town of Zamość.

That’s how her nightmares usually end: suddenly, she finds herself in her hometown. Crossing its threshold, she notices details which don’t align with reality. When the façade of the dream collapses, what remains are nostalgic symbols. They tempt her to stay in the past a little longer. However, one mustn’t linger there too long. Home is merely a stop along the way. The true destination of the journey remains undefined for now. The only certainty is a path full of obstacles, fences, and barriers.

In her art, Agata Popik balances between the real and the unreal, pairing objects with drawings, roads with barriers, using them to present fragments of journeys between her house and her home. She creates landscapes that exist somewhere between Nowhere and Anywhere.

— Emil Laska