Awakenings
The Faculty of Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice and BWA Katowice invite to the exhibition of the latest works of the graduates of the university.
Thanks to the recycling of forms that are captured from other registers, a strategy that is typical of grassroots online practices, it is possible to observe the mechanisms of image circulation. Looking at them, with some sense of helplessness, typical of the post-internet imagination, is a reaction to the changes in culture initiated by new technologies, under the influence of which the horizon has shrunk to the size of the screen. The shiny surface, with the use of which we look at ourselves with great pleasure, has replaced a mirror as a symbol of self-discovery.
In this context, the very concept of a place turns out to be anachronistic, as a location of a certain longitude and latitude which loses its meaning in the era of seductive specters. The mesmerising streams of images distance us from the resisting physicality, space and time defined according to human measures. The precise vision machines that allow access to the clinically clean cyberspace do not take into account the presence of dust, odour or gravity. Instead, they provide a more perfect, more plastic version of reality, in which experience is devoid of nuisance and risk. Any deviation from this media ideal is perceived as either a mistake or a failure. The originals turn out to be disappointing.
This hellish-light vision of reality, in which the ballast of time and space is no longer binding is, at the exhibition, presented with the use of various media: video, image, graphics, object. Drifting in the archive of codes, models and phantasms is possible thanks to the use of a prism that cuts reality into tiny particles, enabling an in-depth observation under laboratory conditions. The procedure of persistent division, sprouting in the imagination plunged into visual delirium, turns out to be a barely perceptible signal of distrust towards accelerated perception. It is a timid attempt to break free from the state of numbness that is maintained by the action of spells and promises made by the images.