Małgorzata Rittersschild. The Lizard Means Short-Lived Happiness

Małgorzata Rittersschild. The Lizard Means Short-Lived Happiness

Arton Foundation
Foksal 11/4, Warsaw
27 June–14 September 2025
Opening: 27 June 2025, 7 pm

Curator: Marika Kuźmicz
Cooperation: Adam Parol
Graphic design: Agnieszka Probola

Sentences spoken, heard, and read accumulate and sink into the depths of memory. Definitions absorbed in various languages, committed to recollection. The yearning to comprehend the principle of existence – of a leaf, of the stars; enigmas so profound they resist expression through formulas or analysis, no matter how often you take notes. An urge to penetrate the essence of things. Words and images deferred “for later” begin to germinate, and the whole becomes increasingly intricate.

But do you know that moment upon waking from a deep sleep – dense with meanings, with words, events, and their hues? A dream in which you both desire and possess the capacity to peer into the interior of things and beings – birds, fish, angels – to apprehend their true nature. To affirm their reality. A dream where figures emerge from darkness, at once terrifying and alluring, alien and intimately known. A dream where the eye assumes the shape of the moon, where a sun in blue and green arises – or another, red and flat like a translucent slice of ripe, perilous fruit. A dream in which the landscapes are smooth, illuminated with an even, diffused light, resembling collages cut from tinted paper; where time obeys unfamiliar laws, contracting and elongating. A dream in which we coin concise, accurate phrases whose echoes linger upon waking. Simple words, which acquire a depth unrevealed by daylight, their concealed meanings disclosed only in dreams.

The moment of abrupt awakening is a fleeting juncture in which the orders of dreams and reality interweave, superimposed like twin transparencies, yielding a third image. The vivid residue of the dream still clings. The reality of the dreamt events and figures, the words spoken within that realm, accompany us. We seek to decipher them as omens, auguries of what might yet unfold in the waking world: “The Lizard Means Short-Lived Happiness.”

Małgorzata Rittersschild (b. 1960)
She studied in the studio of Professor Stefan Gierowski at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1979–1984). In the 1980s, she co-created the artistic milieu of Polish Neo-Expressionism. She took part in the formative exhibitions of the Gruppa collective: Las, góra, a nad górą chmura (Forest, Mountain, and Above the Mountain a Cloud, BWA Gallery, Lublin, 1983) and Tylko dzisiaj wieczorem, kochanie (Only Tonight, Darling, BWA Gallery, Lublin, 1985). In the 1990s, she suspended her artistic practice for over two decades, working in various fields including illustration, graphic design, styling, translation, editing, teaching, and art therapy. During that time, she created several dozen sketchbook-notebooks. In 2018, she returned to her artistic career.

Co-financed by the City of Warsaw
Funded by the Hestia Artistic Journey Foundation
Partners Hestia Artistic Journey Foundation and STU ERGO Hestia S.A.

Public programme and related materials:

Exhibition tours:
13.07. – event
26.07. – event

Film tour of the exhibition translated into Polish Sign Language
https://youtu.be/C_jWXjazOFE

Audiodescription of the exhibition (in Polish): download

Interview produced as part of the Her Herstory workshop: watch

Publication *But does she paint? Małgorzata Kuka Rittersschild in conversation with Marika Kuźmicz download