Helena Minginowicz Paints Personal Works Utilizing & Depicting Disposable Materials
Intensity: It surrounds, embodies, and effuses out of Helena Minginowicz, the painter racking up shows around the globe in 2025. Self-described as an artist focused on “surreal logic” and “emotional realism,” Minginowicz’s art features disquieting, weirdly tender, and sometimes improbably lighthearted tableaus, often on traditionally disposable materials like paper towels or takeaway bags. Lambs on paper towels, frolicking dogs seen through plastic bags, wolves tearing apart their prey on a Korean sheet mask; all of it reveals what Minginowicz calls “the quiet violence of what we call ‘normal.’”
“I feel… like a visual antenna tuned into emotional and cultural frequencies,” Minginowicz said. “Many of those come from the internet, from global anxieties, from algorithmic chaos. I’m a Polish artist in a global glitch. We live in times where reality itself has become surreal. There’s no need to unlock the subconscious—it leaks through our notifications.”
Minginowicz, who uses airbrush to achieve her blurred, then sharply focused pieces, further explained: “I feel like I’m painting archaeological ruins of the present. I’m not just interested in the discarded object, but in the intimacy of its decay—how it touches the body, memory, impulses. These remnants are like cultural fossils: abandoned plastic bags, crushed paper cups, promisingly packaged tissues (I’ve always wondered who designs the embossed pattern on their sides?) …It’s the same with packaging or printed paper towels—I find it deeply moving, this bizarre Sisyphean labor ‘for the trash.’
“All of these disposable objects with short lifespans are not only what we leave behind—they also linger with us, both physically and psychologically. Or they represent what we want to shed quickly, because there are so many new, non-committal things surrounding us. They make it easy to abandon, to consume—especially in the context of relationships.”
Growing up in Poland, Minginowicz gained technical mastery at the Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of Arts in Poznan, mainly by painting traditionally with oils. A whole new world opened up for her, however, when she picked up an airbrush: “I’ve been working with the airbrush for three years now—not long in theory, but it already feels like an extension of my hand, and even more so, of my inner rhythm. It allows me to balance softness with hyperrealism, reality with dream, or even revelation, in a way that resembles breathing.”
ABOVE: Portrait of the artist, photo by Rafał Owczarski
The airbrush also helped expand Minginowicz’s vision for what her art could be: “After years of honing my craft, I wanted to liberate myself from the gesture (of brushes). I wanted to give priority to the idea—especially its fragile, subtle, and non-obvious qualities. The airbrush is a potent medium, yet when used merely to cite pop culture or photographic reality without deeper context, it quickly becomes decorative. Beautiful—but flat. And fiction holds no interest for me. For me, it must serve as a medium for personal confession, not a visual effect. It’s an extension of thought, a mode of expression—never the goal itself. I want every piece to carry inner truth, emotion, and authenticity.”
Despite Minginowicz’s desire to capture reality around her, she has no interest in attaching a Moral Lesson to her work: “I’m not here to judge the viewer, but to ask questions. My works always stem from personal experience—including consumption, in all its contradictions and absurdity. I’m not separate from what I paint—I’m trapped in it, immersed … Life unfolds here and now. That’s probably why my images often create dissonance. I’m more interested in revealing the quiet violence of what we call ‘normal’ than in telling anyone what to feel. If a viewer finds their own discomfort in that—it’s a gift, not something I try to control.”
Moving through Minginowicz’s works can have a bewildering effect wherein one toggles between isolating and unsettling emotions, and the smirking mirth generally associated with scrolling through the latest memes. And she wouldn’t have it any other way. “That duality is very close to my heart,” she says. “That’s exactly how I feel while painting. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with sadness or loneliness—other times there’s something that makes me laugh to tears. And that element also finds its way in.”
ALL OF THESE DISPOSABLE OBJECTS WITH SHORT LIFESPANS ARE NOT ONLY WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND—THEY ALSO LINGER WITH US.”
Looking at Minginowicz’s paintings of human faces on bird heads, cute kitten pillows, and horses with manga tears, leaves the observer feeling like they’re watching a friend’s text thread superimposed onto a gallery wall, but, to the artist, that’s just a byproduct of observing life, these days.
“We can’t escape the language of the internet; it’s now our emotional alphabet,” Minginowicz says. “Sometimes a hashtag or emoji expresses more than an entire essay.”
“I don’t intentionally insert trends into my paintings… but I also don’t filter them out. I absorb the world, I scroll, observe, analyze. So yes, the internet seeps into my work, through color, gesture, distortion, glitches. Humor, or rather, bitter absurdity, emerges from that saturation.”
But Minginowicz’s real inspiration? It goes way further back than the Internet: “Medieval and early Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, alchemical codices, and miniature painting (they’re) full of wild humor and irony,” she says. “Buttocks playing trumpets, men with animal heads, animals dominating humans, or dismembered body parts each expressing different moods without restraint. These are astonishing works where humor mingles with mystery, far more intriguing than today’s memes.”
YES, THE INTERNET SEEPS INTO MY WORK, THROUGH COLOR, GESTURE, DISTORTION, GLITCHES. HUMOR, OR RATHER, BITTER ABSURDITY, EMERGES FROM THAT SATURATION.”
To come up with her paintings, Minginowicz says, “I oscillate between loud excitement and quiet hyper-focus. These two states flow constantly into each other. I can’t stay suspended between them for long. It makes sense; something needs to truly move me, to keep me emotionally stirred, for me to dive into a subject fully, to the point of merging with it. I like being all-in, two hundred percent.”
When she’s excited, Minginowicz says she gathers materials, like visual notes, literary fragments, emotions she’s experiencing, and music. When she’s focused, she says she becomes silent, “a deep internal processing. I work for hours without noticing time passing. There’s never enough of it.”
When she is finished gathering, and ready to pick up her airbrush, Minginowicz says: “At this stage, the emotions are less explosive, a kind of clarity emerges in me, accompanied by an acceptance of uncertainty. Because it’s always there, the unknown. I try not to rush.”
And when she needs to relax or recharge? “That’s a tricky one. I often struggle to focus on a single activity,” Minginowicz says. “I usually need something rhythmic for my body to do, which lets my mind unwind. So I look for ways to combine the two. Cooking, for example, with the right kind of film playing in the background—is incredibly relaxing for me. Usually something I’ve seen a hundred times [laughs]. It’s not about the plot, but the atmosphere. When I really want to disconnect, I seek out places immersed in nature, like the mountains. The rhythm of climbing helps me shed the everyday narrative.”
This intense routine has paid off in recent years for Minginowicz. In 2025 alone, she has shown in shows across Europe and in America: “This year has been intense, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. I’ve just opened a solo show at Prima Galerie in Paris. Next up are group exhibitions at Hesse Flatow in New York and Yusto Giner in Marbella. Then in the fall, I’ll have two more solo shows— one at Lotna Gallery in Warsaw, and the final one of the year at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Torun. It’ll be a lot of work—but I’m beyond excited.”*
This article appears in Hi-Fructose Issue 74. Get the full issue here.
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Kathy Ager’s stirring paintings, inspired by classical still-life and Baroque iconography, integrate pop cultural and personal objects. In a new show at Thinkspace Projects, titled “Golden Age,” her recent explorations are offered, each showing the artist’s knack in both realism and graphical, toon-influenced rendering. The show opens tomorrow and runs through July 20.
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