Only bananas will save us

07-14.09.2021

Buła / Cmielewska / Gajewska / Gil / Jarmoliński / Piątek / Skrzeczyna / Tyralska

Curator: Bartek Jarmoliński

The reality we are part of has an unforeseeable effect on our existence. It is often said that “is good when is good”. The situation changes when is not good anymore.

The natural process in our life seems to be the emerging questions about the plane of something new, better, something that will be consistent with our idea of ​​how it could be and what we would like to be a part of. The creation of phantasms, therefore, is as natural a process as the feeling of lack in real life, from which selected things, places and people find a new configuration in our ideas about what would be best for us. Even if our needs are only temporary, creating a new, better, own reality gives a feeling of building harmony. Assuming that everything changes, so do we and our needs. The most suitable thing is to create your own worlds by visualizing them, which is reflected in the field of visual arts. Collage has long been part of this area. This technique makes it possible to use real elements in a fragmented manner to build a whole, which through the visual aspect of the work becomes a gate to one’s own world, where at some point everything is as we would like it to be. To a large extent, both the awareness of the reality that surrounds us, of which we are a part, as well as the imagination and the images that follow it, make it possible to organize and fulfill our needs. Creating collage images allows you to fantasize about both the world and ourselves. In these pictures there is space for everything that is attractive to us, essential, which broadens and breaks our previous image of the world, man and its complexity.

The element connecting the works presented at the exhibition “Only bananas will save us” is the reference to the world which, although it is not unambiguous, meets our needs on the emotional and visual plane. It is a vision of the world, or rather worlds, as individual beings, in which most often it is not a man who is the main motive of the collage – they are rather plants, animals, various undefined objects that lose their original character in collage juxtapositions. They do not have much in common with reality, but they influence the idyllic character of the representations in the works shown. The title of the exhibition “Only bananas will save us” is quite an ir onical, because it presents visions of worlds that do not exist in reality. It is a visual form that fills gaps and disappointments with an existing human-made reality. The playful, though slightly bittersweet nature of the works is a form of dialogue that raises questions about the need to build a new, better life, where not everything has to be logical, where not always man will be the epicenter of the world and where contrasts build, and not create divisions allowing the evaluation of what is good and what is bad, what is beautiful and what is ugly, in which different – will not mean worse.

Bartek Jarmoliński

Bartek Jarmoliński
H. Skrzeczyna
M. Chmielewska
B. Jarmoliński
A. Buła