I’m Not There

Fantasies occupy a fascinating part of the mental life of each of us. They tear us away from an unpleasant, at times unbearable reality, transport us to distant lands, magnify our achievements, and can serve as a springboard out of the greyness of everyday life. Everyone wants somehow not to live, goes the cult line from Dorota Masłowska's play Między nami dobrze jest (No Matter How Hard We Tried). Elsewhere is the place where one can somehow not live, chase fleeting chimeras or work miracles, make art or plain swindles. For some, a life lived permanently in fantasy becomes a way of being, a modus operandi and a mad curse. Julia Słonecka and Przemek Czepurko are drawn to similar illusory dreams. Słonecka looks at fantasy from the inside, painting melancholy, paradisiacal landscapes, catching moments of unattainable pleasure and unconscious longing. Czepurko portrays those who look at the world through mad eyes, the chosen ones, beautiful souls, the anointed, those who have come to believe in their own exceptionality and are drowning in deceptive delusions of grandeur.