Threshold

In moments of historical tension, darkness returns. After periods of faith in reason, progress and technology, a wave of crisis arrives – a time when rationality loses its power and people once again seek meaning in the incomprehensible and mysterious, the familiar but repressed. Thus, a critical moment continues, not only astronomical, but emotional and cultural. We live in a loop, in an era of accessibility, yet we are exhausted, drained of energy, burnt out. The senses, which were supposed to provide knowledge, begin to tremble from overstimulation. The bright light hurts our eyes, and the image on the screen, too close, seems to move.

With the loss of the future, we begin to look to the past. The language of aesthetic splendour and semantic depth returns; the aesthetics of flow, biomorphic and corporeal. Dense symbolism and symptomatic monsters embody fears, conflicts and desires. They reflect the social projection of the unconscious.

The exhibition will present the latest ceramic works by Paweł Olszczyński and paintings by Julia Szczerbowska. The artistic duo grows out of the intuition that we are increasingly entering a Gothic, borderline, excessive era. We are returning to a point where technology meets ritual, science meets magic, and the body meets the sacred. In the next turn of the old cycle, its tension gives rise to a new spirituality – drawing on religion, but also on matter and energy.

Curator: Marianna Łomża

Poster: @avtomatdesign

The project is co-financed by the Capital City of Warsaw