Beata Drozd was born in Gdansk, Poland and grew up during revolutionary times - the collapse of the Soviet regime. She was able to go to London in 1990 and soon after that to study painting at St Martins College of Art and Design and at Ecole Superioure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris (1992-1998). She lives and works in New York.
Ms Drozd began her artistic career painting portraits for many prominent New Yorkers and creating commissions for such establishments like The NY Friars Club or The Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. She concentrated on collage since 2006.
“Not entirely satisfied with results I achieved in painting, I started exploring paper as a medium, using pieces of glossy printed material in vibrant colors. I came to see the abstract fragments of the advertising images as my expressive marks and brushstrokes. The high quality of the paper, Vogue uses, permanently retains a brilliant spectrum of colors that make it possible to preserve fresh and immediate results. I paste thousands of pieces of paper and other materials onto the canvas in order to build an interesting texture and create a dimensional relief . The result is a kind of spectacle, but one made up of familiar images. In addition, layers of torn publications and textiles create something of a story. I am searching for ways to construct three dimensional surfaces, and to convey these stories better.”
Since that time her materials have consisted solely of popular culture magazines, mainly Vogue, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, physically torn down by the artist. In each work, pages of advertisement are ripped into hundreds of varying pieces and resembled into dynamic compositions that reflect the artist’s simultaneous commitments to representation and abstraction. The effect is an accomplished pastiche of the images vaguely recognized by the viewer, who has undoubtedly passed several of them while looking through the morning papers or walking down the streets of New York, without focusing on their cultural significance or aesthetic properties.
Beata Drozd is a paintless collagist. Her main tools are paper, glue and scissors. Drozd’s collages are often mistaken for paintings, but she does not use any paint, even in the most detailed parts of the picture. She juxtapositions pieces of paper into collections of images, colors and forms and achieves shades, mood, light, vibrancy and unusual characteristics of each person she portrays, without using a drop of paint.
STATEMENT
© 2011 Beata Drozd