BOREDOM AND LAUGHTER

The multimedia installation by Mateusz Pek entitled Boredom and Laughter, displayed at ggm1, includes a number of video presentations of young women’s portraits accompanied by an installation in which an armchair and electronic equipment are combined together.

From the author: What makes human beings interesting to me is their entanglement in a web of fears and narcissism, solitude and striving to break through. (…) What follows next is their need for attendance, participation and thus my hero wants to make himself distinguishable for any reason, even something trivial.

Those heroes, or in fact heroines, depicted here inhabit the virtual communicative space of the Internet. The very moment one logs into a chat-room, they appear onstage, the curtain is lifted. From that moment until the log out command is entered, they are seen as the stars of the show: dancing, laughing, pulling faces. The reception of the spectacle isn’t easy though: the presentations are shown simultaneously, making it distracting and disorientating and the lack of clear cause-effect narration leads to boredom. Instead of the safety provided by the cosy room these heroines appear in, the author evokes a stifling atmosphere by applying intense colours in the background.

In the other room of the gallery, another installation seems to provide counterpoint to the intense video presentation. The author emphasizes the masculine element concealed in objects. Are they then a metaphor of relations between contemporary people? Or is it simply an anthropological documentation of the ways bored homo sapiens lead their life? Whatever track we take, the presented documentary can be treated as a testimony to the contemporary culture of boredom, ridiculous in its chase after something new or even newer.

The breakthrough in the project is marked by a liberating moment when Katty Lester appears onstage. The song “Love letters” is delivered in the midst of these Internet characters, while the singer steadily and smoothly approaches the viewer. This nostalgic song breaks the boredom, the curtain drops.

Maria Sasin

Mateusz Pek is one of the first Polish artists to search the Internet, computer games and programmes in order to grasp its power to shape the human condition.

His works reflect the tension between two distinct features: human and mechanical, tangible and virtual, organic and artificial. From this tension, truly ontological questions spring out: what is happening to reality as we know it if the most basic dimensions of human activity find representation in sterile, insubstantial media? This is a paradox Mateusz Pek refrains from expressing explicitly, but it is nevertheless the focus in which his artistic activity and reflection should be seen.

Piotr Stasiowski 

BOREDOM AND LAUGHTER

Mateusz Pęk

OPENING: Friday, May 11, 2012, 6:30 p.m.

EXHIBITION: 12.05 – 10.06.2012

CURATOR: Maria Sasin

VENUE: Gdansk City Gallery 1, Piwna 27/29

OPENING HOURS: Tuesday – Wednesday 11 am - 5 pm, Thursday – Sunday 11 am – 7 pm.

FREE ADMISSION  

 

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