I Speak as No One in Particular
Jakub Gliński and Jan Możdżyńsk
15.05–13.06.2020
Ok boomer! Welcome to the endtimes, text: Agata Pyzik
Lokal_30
Wilcza 29A, 00-544 Warsaw
Photo: Bartosz Górka
Feeling powerless is a permanent feeling in my
generation. Born in the 1980s and 1990s, we grew up in the moment of systemic change and artificially boosted hope, that
the free market and capitalism will sort everything out. Social classes will disappear, and we, as a society, will
aspire to the western, allegedly better quality of life. The proceeding decades overturned that completely. Capitalist
deregulation brought catastrophic change on every level. Destruction ruled both among most intimate feelings and
relationships, as it did within political systems and the natural environment we live in.
Jan Możdżyński sounds like a typical millennial,
hoping to change the world with his painting equipped with revolutionary slogans. However, his intentions are
completely true and authentic. The artist looks back at certain dystopian projects and visions from the past (from
Dick, Ballard and with Blade Runner as the primary cultural text), projecting their implications into the future.
Fascinated by cyberpunk, feminism, queer aesthetics and the overlapping of technologies and the body, he paints postapocalyptic
objects and visions, at the same time filled with hope. A hope that love, good and brotherhood/sisterhood will
triumph in the end.
Jakub Gliński in turn is pushed by decidedly thanatic
death drive. Thanatos ruling his world is whimsical, punkish and finds nihilist pleasure in announcing the end of the
world. The punky Neue Wilde of the 1980s meets here the grim world from the Westworld series, where social
darwinism and cynicism of the rich allows them to think they have an absolute power over the others. To play God, to giveth
live and to taketh life. Perhaps some kind of machine rebellion, here token for the working, subaltern masses, could be
the rescue for us all. In these circumstances, transhumanity seems like a good option, as the machines at least
follow some logic and profess more ethical view than the man, possessed with greed of money and power.
The art for our time, sinister and dangerous, but also
granting us a glimpse of hope.