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Exhibitions

"The Absolute Factory"

Andrzej Wasilewski

Boxes Art Museum
June 26,2024 - September 02,2024
Sound system or a score for eight fans 2024 Music: Andrzej Wasilewski, Stanisław Ruksza, 12 min (loop) Mobile sculpture: ventilation ducts, culm, dust, steel ropes, 500 meters of 3 x 0.75 cable, air fans

June 26, 2024 September 2, 2024

In his art practice, Andrzej Wasilewski refers to the relationship of contemporary man with technology, communication, economy, archaeology, research methods and climate change, the nature of which has caused the current ethics, interdependence of genres, and finally creativity itself to become outdated.

The Absolute Factory is a site-specific audio-visual piece created especially for the show at Boxes Art Museum. The concept of the massive apocalyptic work combines a scientific approach with a sense of absurdity and black humour. The exhibition spaces of the building features a set of complementary installations, in which the artist uses the language of primitive technological forms, industrial iconography and pop culture to take up the complex topic of coal and fossil fuels in the context of climate change and new social and political utopias.

At the same time, The Absolute Factory is a play inspired by the spirit of neo-Dada or fluxus practices, stripping away the pathos of inflated values that envelop the language of the world of culture and “disguise” the bloated aesthetics of works in the spirit of art & science, sound-art, archive or minimalism.

The titular motif was taken from the classic Czech dystopian novel The Absolute At Large by Karel Čapek, in which a visionary inventor constructs a carburator – a device extracting inexhaustible energy from coal. In doing so it releases into the world the Absolute, the spiritual essence held within all matter. If God is omnipresent, is it possible to extract the divine substance from any object? As the matter transforms into the concept of the Absolute, events get out of humanity’s control, causing a series of violent socio-political changes. While the carburator continues to release the Absolute, the process brings chaos, wars, and last but not least, nearly complete destruction of the human race.

(By Stanislaw Ruksza, curator)

Sound system or a score for eight fans 2024 Music: Andrzej Wasilewski, Stanisław Ruksza, 12 min (loop) Mobile sculpture: ventilation ducts, culm, dust, steel ropes, 500 meters of 3 x 0.75 cable, air fans
Sound system or a score for eight fans, 2024, Music: Andrzej Wasilewski, Stanisław Ruksza, 12 min (loop) Mobile sculpture: ventilation ducts, culm, dust, steel ropes, 500 meters of 3 x 0.75 cable, air fans

The concept of “absolute” is one of freedom, yet it also represents lawlessness. In the dystopian novel Továrna na absolutno by the Czech science fiction writer Karel Čapek, a scientist invents a carburator that devours fossil fuels. This carburator generates an inexhaustible supply of cheap energy by completely annihilating matter, while also releasing another kind of spiritual byproduct, the “absolute.” Once released by the carburator, the “absolute” influences the thoughts and  outlook of everyone, intensifying religious and ethnic fanaticism, leading to ideological confrontations and cultural conflicts. The “absolute” is originally a spiritual essence embedded in and permeating all matter. It seems to have a deep connection with the concept of absolute metaphysics in Western philosophy, the concept of “Brahman” in Indian philosophy, the concept of “Dao” in the Chinese “Tao Te Ching,” Schelling’s idealism, and the “Absolute Spirit” in Hegel’s philosophy.

Andrzej Wasilewski’s installation “The Absolute Factory” is actually a deliberate physical model that embodies the “absolute” carburator in the real world. It refers to emptiness, boundlessness, and infinity. Regardless of whether it faces traditional cultural genes, aesthetics, readymades, or experiences of the retina, knowledge systems, or logical structures. “The Absolute Factory” is constantly doing subtraction. It intends to deconstruct and devour grand narratives and mind maps through a kind of reverse logical deduction, bringing everything back to zero.

Perhaps humans are one of the most important carbon-based species in the universe with a self-destructive complex and capacity. The concept of “absolute” cited by Polish The idea of the Absolute, invoked by Polish artist Andrzej Wasilewski, is becoming a pervasive and omnipotent superpower, super-consciousness, and super-intelligence in the 21st century with the explosion of artificial intelligence technology. It has even brought humanity to face the end of the world more directly as it becomes embroiled in conflict and war. What is seen at the museum, Andrzej Wasilewski’s perception of people and objects, seems to be confined by his own physical conditions and life experiences. The tangible world he witnessed also seems to have been replaced with various fragments of epistemic inertia. However, as long as the Absolute Factory work is present and on display, no matter who is there, once the inner view is deep and free from the constraints of the phenomenal world, one can perceive the flowers and trees in the mountains that have nothing outside the mind.The future is promising for those who have a good conscience in this way.

(By Gu Zhenqing, curator)

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Sound system or a score for eight fans, 2024, Music: Andrzej Wasilewski, Stanisław Ruksza, 12 min (loop) Mobile sculpture: ventilation ducts, culm, dust, steel ropes, 500 meters of 3 x 0.75 cable, air fans
Sound system or a score for eight fans, 2024, Music: Andrzej Wasilewski, Stanisław Ruksza, 12 min (loop) Mobile sculpture: ventilation ducts, culm, dust, steel ropes, 500 meters of 3 x 0.75 cable, air fans
Shunfeng Mountain Park
Foshan,
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