One of the key references informing Tochman’s work is the short fiction of Italo Calvino. Exploring themes of labyrinths, the condensation of reality, and its multilayered nature, Calvino constructs cosmic landscapes as uncharted territories—spaces that become symbols of infinity and the inexpressibility of human experience. In the short story All at One Point, the author takes us to a time preceding the expansion of the universe, a vision inspired by the scientific model of the Big Bang. He describes the difficulty of existing in a reality so dense and compressed that there is no room for movement. The protagonist attempts to move, to find a place for himself, to differentiate his own being, yet the conditions are extreme. The sense of personal identity becomes blurred, as it is impossible to distinguish oneself from anything else. Only the transformations unfolding within the landscape allow the protagonist to begin shaping a sense of individual identity.
Agata Cukierska, Katarzyna Kalina, from the curatorial text for the exhibition Endless Blue, CSW Kronika, Bytom, 2025
Something feels not quite right. Lines intersect to create uncanny perspectives; unearthly plants emerge from cracks in the soil; the light looks strangled. In Kraków-based artist Joanna Tochman’s paintings, condensed landscapes and illogically replicating pools challenge one’s sense of space and the fuzzy realm between reality and fiction.
Kate Mothes, Jacuzzi Error. Exploring the logic of space with Joanna Tochman, “Dovetail Magazine” 2022
Most of the artist’s paintings are large, filling our field of vision like the backlit screen of a computer animation. Recently, her “Computer Game Landscapes” series introduces the viewer to vivid, otherworldly vistas reminiscent of early digital games. In using a traditional medium like oil paint, she confronts the “technical” way that landscape is presented in early computer games, especially the blocky, pixelated artwork made as a result of the low-resolution television and computer screens at the time.
Translating a digital space into an analog medium, she instills each work with the presence of the artist’s hand despite the absence of human presence amongst the scenery. Some compositions appear unsettlingly glitchy where elements have duplicated or gotten stuck, as if time has been paused—until the play button is pressed again. The indefinitely multiplying landscape alludes to the way a player proceeds through a level, each scene regenerating indefinitely until some predetermined goal has been reached. In Tochman’s paintings, the goal has been removed altogether, so one feels uncomfortably at loose ends, stranded.
Kate Mothes, Jacuzzi Error. Exploring the logic of space with Joanna Tochman, “Dovetail Magazine” 2022
Slightly earlier paintings from the series “Swimming Pools” and “Multiplication” focus on architectural details, pulling the viewer into mysterious indoor worlds where the boundaries of the rooms seem to fall off the edges. Often seemingly void of life, like holding tanks or empty baths, stepped pools and reservoirs appear both enormous yet isolated, highlighted by an unknown light source and reaching to unnerving depths.
Kate Mothes, Jacuzzi Error. Exploring the logic of space with Joanna Tochman, “Dovetail Magazine” 2022
As if viewed in mirrors that face each other or in the rippling reflection of water, Tochman’s disorienting compositions explore movement and time through spaces that exist between the natural and artificial. Sometimes referencing specific places, like a swimming pool in Szeged, Hungary, the specifics of place are blurred at the periphery. The longer we spend in them, the more dreamlike they become.
Kate Mothes, Jacuzzi Error. Exploring the logic of space with Joanna Tochman, “Dovetail Magazine” 2022
Often seemingly void of life, like holding tanks or empty baths, stepped pools and reservoirs appear both enormous yet isolated, highlighted by an unknown light source and reaching to unnerving depths. When we do encounter living beings, like in the series “Fights”, it is in the form of trout, the collective term for which is a “hover,” when their congregations take a violent turn. What are they doing there? Are they going mad within the confines of their basins?
Kate Mothes, Jacuzzi Error. Exploring the logic of space with Joanna Tochman, “Dovetail Magazine” 2022
