curatorial rationale

The title of my exhibition disintegration in the face of suffering tries to deal with how the body experiences suffering that exceeds its boundaries, but also how we can show through its structure the many dimensions of a feeling so complex and multifaceted. All of the pieces emerged from my exploration of the ways we perceive others in their suffering, and how we process our own. While suffering is a topic much exhausted by Western art, I believe that searching for my own way to deal with the way it mesmerizes and repels, the way it retracts to our interiors and usurps our beings, the way it hides and ejects, holds a value. The exhibition shows the journey to extricate the metaphysical from the physical by using the latter to show the first. I hope a person confronted with it engages with the portrayals and finds a way to consciously reflect on the unity of suffering as a human condition, but also emancipates from its traditional portrayals, searching for their own understanding of the way their body inholds that which they feel.

A lot of attention has been paid to choosing the medium for each piece. Since the exhibition focuses on the ways in which we can portray things seemingly intangible, it was crucial to find new ways in which to see things. Works like a man pierced or a face concealed seek to use their structure to evoke discomfort connected to pain and create a possibility of rather physical identification with the figures presented. There are also pieces like incomprehensibility or she cried that night that find meaning in an unconventional treatment of the medium – using a torn book or incomprehensible text to picture the effect of different dimensions of suffering on a human.

Except for two works – life is sweet and she cried that night, all works are named with either one of two patterns. A man pierced, a body chasmed, a face concealed and a skin uncovered all refer to the inner experiences connected to suffering. They tell of its different shades, whether that be an abstract clash of a destructive force and a vulnerable fragility found in the consumption of skin by blackness in a skin uncovered, or a realisation of the mundanity of suffering represented by a tragic mask brought down by its medium in a face concealed. Incomprehensibility, intangibility and inaudibility focus rather on the way we perceive people in pain, on how difficult it is to notice someone’s feelings as in intangibility, on how our most obvious feelings can be muted, the way a sculpture is as in inaudibility. The remaining two pieces both contain an important context of other works of art that needed to be underlined in the title.

All of the works were to be exhibited in a spacious hall with simple, white surrounding that would bring out the pieces. The order of the works places them in an aware correlation. A body chasmed and a skin uncovered are shown subsequently as they have opposite approaches to the same idea – damaged skin, either externally consumed by suffering or exposing the inner damages. However, the latter piece hangs on a separate wall as it is a large, abstract piece that should be contemplated without any distractions, allowing the piece to immerse the viewer. Life is sweet and she cried that night are exhibited next to each other as they both refer to the style of the Polish School of Posters and explore topics inspired by other artworks. The smaller pieces are all exhibited together in order to guide the viewer’s eyes to them, not allowing them to get lost between the larger pieces.