Honorata Mochalska i Andrzej Błachut, Wystawa prac najnowszych i nie tylko

The atmosphere of family photography – photos taken in hundreds in a park or in a flat by a mobile phone camera. But instead of uncle Mark and grandma Eve or friends from the playground we can see some object of peculiar shapes. The situation is a bit like of kids’ theatre. The poses of the character differ from idyllic scenes with a young lady playing in the open air to the pictures where kindergarten Johnny rides his little donkey. The object is weird, but the girl treats it as it was an ordinary animal; it’s anonymous but the girl plays with it as it she knew it well. It’s a pure form but only for a moment, as its feelers are sticking out and cause it to look like a kind of animal. But it’s not the type of animal you can take for a walk – it has more to do with an overgrown insect, which you cannot stroke or cuddle, because it’s slimy and it can bite. The object is nice and repulsive at the same time. The character is standing in such a pose like she was waiting for a shot of camera. These are set and arranged scenes. Why? Why should one take an invented and hand made creatures for a walk? Is all fun coming from the awareness that they are not alive or is it coming from something different? And from what, if so?

The object that can be seen on the photos is standing in the gallery space, in front of the photographs. Its presence is encouraging us to play with it and to copy the situations from the photos. The problem is that we’re in a gallery where not everything is proper. The object, that has been only a toy on the photo, becomes an exhibit in the gallery space. It seems silly to make silly things. The object is only few meters from the spectator. The word was made flesh. And what’s next? Nothing. We still don’t know what it is and for whom it works. We are standing in a gallery and we won’t get close to it, we won’t touch the exhibit to check if it’s soft and fluffy like a pinna or it’s hard and cold as a plastic gadget. It turns out that the object makes us feel bashful and embarrassed, that the situation has become quite awkward, that we can’t catch the pockemon.

Maybe this is where the irony of these works is placed? They might show that what could be fun has gained the size and authority of institution and exhibit, that it has ceased to be alive, that it’s becoming dead with each word of this text. They might show that we don’t feel but we interpret. They might show that we should go back in time for about twenty years and remind ourselves the technical classes in school and the pleasure given by gluing, carving and showing and posing afterwards – pointless and innocently thoughtless play. A pockemon was made flesh but we can’t catch it. We don’t know if it’s fluffy or rough, coarse or nice to touch. Although the object is right under our nose, it is an element of the exhibition for us, so we’re afraid to get close to it, remembering the phrase that we have heard so often: “Please don’t touch the exhibits!”

by Łukasz Białkowski