10.03–06.05. 2022
Opening: 10.03.2022, at 6:30 p.m.
p_art Galerie, Polish Insitute
Am Gestade 7, 1010 Vienna
Pausing the course of events. Keeping the feeling of excitement for as long as possible. Looking forward to the end of the story. Cliffhanger, or the suspension of a plot at a time of mounting tension, is a device invented for the needs of serialised novels – it has now spread into many other areas – in order to maintain people’s interest in a world where excess prevails. It incentivises us to wait for the next season of a TV series, to buy the next book in a series, or endure the long strings of commercials during a movie. Apparently, the sense of the unknown captivates and stirs the imagination. Yet, recently cliffhangers have permeated from the world of entertainment to the real world, and rather than being associated with excitement, the feeling of suspense and mystery arouses anxiety and frustration. We look forward to the end of the story, but when it comes, we hope for more plot twists.
‘Cliffhanger’ consists of works from the latest projects of Weronika Gęsicka – ‘Holiday’, ‘Cocoon’, ‘Smash’ and ‘Fun and Games’ which are based on archival pictures from photo banks. In the “Smash” (2019-2020) series, the artist transforms archive stock portraits with a focus on gestures. The initially neutral hand relations become an instrument of repression through small shifts and interventions; they take part in an act of self-injury. The series “Cocoon” (2020) used photos of houses in the suburbs associated with security and family. These houses have been transformed into private fortresses, hard to reach, but even harder to get out of them. “Holiday” (2019-2021) is made on the basis of souvenir photos from the holiday. These are works that show the moment between the end of the old reality and the beginning of the new, the safe zone and the threat, the brief moment in which change approaches, but we do not yet see it. The people in the pictures still seem to be happy, but what is coming for them seems to be inevitable. The direct inspiration for the project “Fun and Games” (2021-2022) was the artist’s personal experience – motherhood.
„Cliffhanger” is an attempt to capture the tensions and fears that we have come to face nowadays. Inundated with news about emerging threats and not quite optimistic forecasts for the future, we begin to sense the end of reality as we know it. Scratches start to appear on the idyllic pictures that make up a large portion of our privileged world. We are no longer able to function in an artificially created reality where everything, from our image to the way we spend our leisure time, must be perfect.