MAGDA KIRK (MAGDALENA KIRKLEWSKA) is a Polish artist (b.1990). She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts/ Painting Department in Gdańsk, Poland (2015). In her work, she focuses on the theme of the body in cultural and social contexts. She creates images of bodies enveloped in a dreamy, blurry aura. Inspired by models, bodybuilders, and fictional characters such as superheroes, she explores cultural ideals of the female and male body and their impact on the identity, self-perception, and self-expression of ordinary, contemporary individuals. Her approach combines elements of humor and unease, beauty and ugliness, or cuteness and aggression, showing the complexity of emotions that accompany our intimate relationship with our bodies, both as subjects and objects. She uses motifs and symbols from tattoo culture, trash graffiti, cartoons, and broadly defined pop culture as a means of expression, often blending them into a tissue that covers the bodies' flesh. The artist’s painting process is a meditation of putting multiple layers of color and airbrush doodles, which results in an impression of a luminous, unreal realism.