Beata Szczecińska aka Cityabyss

Visual artist and designer. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow from The Faculty of Graphics at the 
Woodcut Studio of prof. Zbigniew Lutomski. In her creative work, she is interested in topics related to the identity 
of an individual in a world of supersaturation, instability and volatility. In the creative process, she uses a
fragment, montage, image manipulation, placing the viewer between what was and what remains - evoking the concept of 
absence, disappearance. Formal solutions, content symbolisation, image processing - combines legibility of forms with
autonomous abstraction and narrative formality.

Szczecińska is a scholarship holder of the Marshal of the Podlaskie Voivodeship in the field of artistic creation 
for 2023. In 2019, she won a Gold Medal in the "Illustration" category at the Festival GOSEE AWARDS in Berlin. 
In 2017, she received an Art Scholarship, Ello's Creative Excellence Awards in Los Angeles. Her work has been presented 
at many exhibitions, most notably at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Brazil and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, in cooperation 
with curators from Double Decker, London. Also, among others Grant Prix of Young Polish Graphics in Krakow, Contemporary 
Art Gallery in Katowice, Soho Factory Warsaw, Contemporary Art Gallery in Wroclaw, Contemporary Art Fair in Munich,
Millepiani Gallery in Rome or Future Fest in London, the largest festival in Europe referring to the future.  
Her works have been published in many prestigious publishing houses, including among others, Die Gestalten Verlag, 
Maomao, Anova or RotoVision, also press features, among others - Elle, Computer Arts, IdN, Varoom. 
As a designer she created an exclusive series of abstract compositions for Puro Hotel in Poznan and Kinsterna Hotel 
in Greece. She also designed murals for the Polish State Railways, Lodz Fabryczna Station, and a series of murals 
for Bank BGK, located in Warsaw Main Metro Station and Varso Place Complex. In 2019, she took part in a short 
documentary broadcast on polish television about Warsaw murals. For Bank BGK she created a series of works 
advertising the Bank on the occasion of its 95th anniversary.

Awards:

-Scholarship of the Marshal of the Podlaskie Voivodeship in the field of artistic creativity, 2023

-GOSEE AWARDS, Gold Medal in "Illustration" category, Berlin, 2019

- GRANT - of the Honorable Mention Award Ello’s 2017 Creative Excellence Awards. Los Angeles, United States, 2018

-TV interview broadcast on TVP2. Speak about a mural design made for the 95th anniversary of BGK,  
Warsaw, Metro Centrum, 2019

- Cooperation with Your Art Maison Gallery, Poligonowa 1, Warsaw

Press reviews:

"Under the moniker Cityabyss, artist and designer Beata Szczecińska applies a fresh approach to creating visual culture in a world of visual oversaturation. Her art projects Consumerism and Metamorphosis, identified in her rich portfolio as “personal,” do indeed feel very personal to a viewer who, at first glance, must put it all together and charm some type of meaning into revealing itself. Fragmentation and a penchant for the indistinguishable are present in her works, which retain an articulated critical voice, resisting the comfort of abstraction.  Multi-layered and monochromatic, Szczecińska’s works speak to a time and space we recognise with ease. The confusion and alienation of urban life, the sensory overdrive of consumerism, the contradictions of form, content, and intention – they all inform individual and collective experiences of today, as the consumer and the consumed overlap and blend, with images forming new frontiers of the self"   /  Elena Stanciu from Petrie

"In the "Image Emanation" series, artist Beata Szczecińska, Polish illustrator and designer, who graduated from the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Lomza and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, she fragmented images of shaded and dotted grays, intertwining them and integrating with lines, black and white shapes that remind us curvilinear and sensual forms by Hans Arp. "The idea behind my concept is a fragment, shredding, assembly, interference in the image, excessive vision, visual waste, multilayeredness, conglomerate, content noise, shred, scrap, recoil" The artist shows us broken world by overlapping visual sequences, flowing like an uninterrupted flow of visions and appearances, which emphasizes visual consumerism. She fragmented pictures of characters, introducing simulations and appearances of reality that are an imaginary representation of the unreal. Static forms that contain the potential force of an explosion, they transform into other forms, their mobility is felt, they are mutated but stable, while remaining in chaos to become unstable"  /  Laura Malaterra from Artwort

Exhibitions:

-Group Exhibition " Polish Young Art",  Contemporary Art Gallery - Station of Art Gallery, Warsaw, Poland 02.12 - 17.12.2024

-Solo show "Existing Landscape", Contemporary Art Gallery in Łomża, Poland 14.06 - 30.06.2023. The project was implemented under the Scholarship of the Marshal of the Podlaskie Voivodeship in the field of artistic creativity for 2023

-"The Long Street of Art" - Gallery of Contemporary Art in Łomża, Poland. May-June 2022

- Group Exhibition "Contrasts", Gallery Millepiani Via N. Odero, 13 Rome, Italy  13.07-21.07.2021. The exhibition refers to the "Contrasts" theme as a expression on a formal-aesthetic and physical point of view, as well as by the biological, human, political, social and psychological perspective.

- Artdoc Group Exhibition "Dada and Democracy" , online 12.2020. The exhibition present the work of artists who question the social and political situation of the world in our time.

- "Repurpose", / Adidas Originals x Creative Debuts, London 15.08.2019. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication. The idea of ​​the exhibition refers to the concept of reuse, regeneration, recycling, waste and exhausted resources. 

- FutureFest, "Alternative You" , Tobacco Dock, London, 06.07-07.07.2018. Exhibition accompanying Europe's largest festival about the future. The exhibition refers to the main theme of the Festival's program. Refers to our constant identity evolution at the intersection of the real and digital world. How can we discover and edit our identity in the future? "For many, our relationship with the future is problematic. From hidden influences in the media and politics to growing threatsterrorism and environmental degradation. The idea of the Festival refers to shaping a better future through presentationsexhibitions, debates and inspirational conversations"

- Wilson Shaft Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, Katowice, Poland. 9.03-20.05.2018. "II Review of Contemporary Art "New Avant Garde". Presentation of graphics from the series "Consumerism". "Focusing on the progress of the 21st century such terms as, consumptionism simply speaking, excessive consumption, unjustified by the real needs of having, where not social, individual or ecological costs are important. This is related to environmental pollution and mass production. Living in a society we experience feelings resulting from being part of the culture that we have created ourselves, I am interested in these feelings, in the context of mass and unit"

 -"Cyberia", Ugly Duck Gallery, London 25.08-27.08.2017. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication. The exhibition engages visitors in visual dialogue on geopolitical topics, social and even interplanetary occurring as a result of digitalisation.

-"There is no planet B", Underdog Gallery, London 04.06-06.06.2016. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication. The exhibition highlights the problems our planet is currently facing - economic, environmental, political - and what our world would look like without them.

- International Print Triennial / Grand Prix of Young Polish Graphic Arts, Academy Of Fine Arts Gallery, Plac Matejki 13, Krakow, Poland. 18.09-18.10.2015. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication. The idea of ​​the exhibition was to present works that can become an important and sometimes even radical commentary on the iconosphere around us.

- Ilustracja PL "O-KUPOWAĆ" Soho Factory, Warsaw, Poland. 17.05-27.05.2012. The exhibition referring to changes taking place in the world around us and our attitude to them. Context of the exhibition The illustration PL 2012 is: globalization, the economic crisis, rapid development of the media and technology, where paradoxically, the process of reaching consumers and relations with them become as important as the product itself, where companies try to operate locally, where the consumer turns into a prosumer.

- "I was a dog", Gallery Of Contemporary Art BWA Wroclaw, Poland. 28.08-20.09.2009

-Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Exhibition title "XXL" Brazil. 10-2008-06-2009. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication. 33 international artists and designers took part in the exhibition. The question was: "What does XXL mean to you"? The show of over 80 works has been the most successful at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum since its opening in 2003. (80,000 visitors, 200 articles) The duration of the exhibition was extended twice.

- Palaise de Tokyo, an exhibition of illustrations in collaboration with Double Decker, Paris, 03.06-03.07-2008
- Trafalgar Hotel, exhibition of illustrations in cooperation with Double Decker, London, 11.09-18.09-2007

Art Fairs:

- Castle Groupshow STROKE.02 Urban Art Fair, Munich / 2010
- Castle Groupshow Galeria Der Farberei, Munich / 2010

Books:

Illusive 2 (Die Gestalten Verlag), Germany
The Sourcebook of Contemporary Illustration, (Maomao), Spain
Great Big Book Of Fashion Illustration (Anova), UK
Creating Great Graphic Design To A Budget (RotoVision), UK
Beyond Illustration, The finest in contemporary international Art & Illustration (Publikat), Germany
Katalogue Extra Large, UK
Catalogue Grand Prix Of Young Polish Print, Krakow, Poland
Instant Graphic (RotoVision), UK
Web Design Index 7 (Pepin Press), Holland
Semi-Permanent Book 2013, Australia
OFFF Catalogue 2009 / International Festival For The Post-Digital Creation Culture, Lisbon 2009
Fashion Design (Feierabend Unique Books, and the design agency 1enders Zeixs), Germany
Semi-Permanent Book 2010 Ultimate Illustration (Monsa), Spain
International Design Yearbook 2 (Madison Organization), China 
OFFF Catalogue 2010 / International Festival For The Post-Digital Creation Culture, Paris 
Black Book Raw, USA