August 21 – October 3
For almost a year, the students worked with curator Milena Stryjewska and the artists leading the studio—Jakub Wróblewski, Sebulec, and Andrei Isakov—to prepare an exhibition that, by design, was not intended to be a conventional presentation of student work. What emerged was a thematic exhibition in which the works themselves, as well as the ways in which individual artists perceive the world, are of primary importance. Starting from their needs, a range of experiences was brought together under the title Excessive Reality.
The aforementioned excess is treated as an environment from which individual artistic concepts emerge. Rather than simply stating the condition of excess, however, the artists propose various ways of moving beyond the established frameworks. They expose the weakness of the mechanisms responsible for overproduction, as well as the fragility of the institutions intended to control it. They invite us to turn inward, in order not to succumb to the intensification of emotions and desires. They confront the incessant need to continuously produce appearances of one’s own identity. They negotiate the constant filling of space with content, images, production, and presence. They loosen rigid systems and structures, proposing new, transitional forms in their place.
The structure of the exhibition itself addresses the problem of excess on a meta-level—the number of works selected proved too large to fit within the gallery space as part of a single exhibition. Consequently, the exhibition has been divided into three parts, with the middle section taking the form of performative actions. This strategy also acquires a self-critical dimension, as it reveals that the exhibition itself becomes a symptom of an excessive reality.
