The Master's Tools
Found objects (antique Punch and Judy puppet - The Policeman), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aerosol paint, aluminium, plexiglass.
190 x 80 x 12 cm
2025
☉
Scene from a recruitment office:
Sweating bodies moving in unison, a never-ending line in the middle of a desert of men and women who, as a means to make ends meet, have decided to become an extension of the regime. They fear the physical, sedentary as they are, out of breath as soon as the stopwatch ticks to ten. Their fears are unfounded, though; the most important skillset today is the ability to disregard the Other, to pull the trigger when instructed. Almost all pass, except for a young man born with no hands.
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Stürm / Storm
Found objects (Christmas tinsel garland), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass, epoxy glue.
160 x 100 x 8 cm
2025
☉
(The firebombing of Hamburg vs. The Blitz)
(Dresden vs. Desert Storm)
(Gaza vs. Hiroshima)
- Why do we condone one while looking scornfully upon the other?
- Because the victor gets to decide how history is written.
Excerpt of Disney’s script for The Lion King (1994):
Cut to a frontal shot of Pride Rock, with Mufasa and Simba sitting side by side on the summit, which is lit by the rising sun, as the music swells.
Mufasa
Look, Simba. [Cut to a back shot of Mufasa and Simba sitting side by side on the summit of Pride Rock, silhouetted by the distant rising sun.] Everything the light touches is our kingdom.
Simba
Wow.
The camera slowly begins to swivel around Mufasa and Simba to show their faces.
Mufasa
A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here [Cut to a frontal shot of Simba looking up at Mufasa reverently.] and will rise with you [Mufasa bends his head into frame so that he is almost at eye level with Simba.] as the new king.
Cut to a wide back shot of Mufasa and Simba sitting side by side on the summit of Pride Rock, with the entirety of the Pride Lands spread out before them and the sun rising in the distance.
Simba
And this'll all be mine?
Simba begins to stride along the edge of the summit of Pride Rock.
Mufasa
Everything.
Cut to a back shot of Simba striding along the edge of the summit of Pride Rock; the camera follows him, revealing a strangely shadowy landscape in the distance.
Simba
Everything the light touches. [Simba sits. He looks over his shoulder, in the direction of Mufasa.] What about that shadowy place?
Mufasa
[from off-screen] That's beyond our borders. [Cut to a frontal shot of Mufasa and Simba, with Mufasa approaching Simba from behind.] You must never go there, Simba.
Simba
But I thought a king can do whatever he wants.
Mufasa smiles. He turns and walks away.
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Love
Found objects (antique baseball bat), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
190 x 80 x 12 cm
2025
☉
Emotional violence, the kind where your hair’s falling out in clumps and you can’t sleep due to all the stress and you go into full-on panic mode when you hear the key in the door, where your kids are doing poorly in school because daddy liked to drink and mommy likes to take it out on you. (But he said he’s sorry!!)( He said it’s gonna be different from now on…) You’re all alone in a big city and the last time you spoke to your mother was 10 years ago. It gets lonely doesn’t it?
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160 x 100 x 8 cm
2025
☉
My body is a vessel. Full of blood, full of hope, full of medicated bliss.
My body is a vessel. Full of water, full of semen, full of love.
My body is a vessel. Full of tears, full of joy, full of fear.
My body is an object of desire.
My body is an object of hate.
My body is not yours.
My body is not mine.
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180 x 130 x 12 cm
2025
☉
Rank (definitions from Oxford Languages):
__________________________________
● a position in the hierarchy of the armed forces.
"an army officer of high rank"
● a position within the hierarchy of an organisation or society.
"only two cabinet members had held ministerial rank before"
● high social position.
"persons of rank and breeding"
● a single line of soldiers or police officers drawn up abreast.
"they were drawn up outside their barracks in long ranks"
● the people belonging to or constituting a group or class.
"the ranks of Britain's unemployed"
● give (someone or something) a rank or place within a grading system.
"students ranked the samples in order of preference"
● have a specified rank or place within a grading system.
"he now ranks third in America"
● having a foul or offensive smell.
"breathing rank air"
● very unpleasant.
"the tea at work is nice but the coffee's pretty rank"
● (especially of something bad or deficient) complete and utter (used for emphasis).
"rank stupidity"
● information retrieval:
“A majority of search engines use ranking algorithms to provide users with accurate and relevant results.”
● advance in an organisation by one's own efforts.
"he rose through the ranks to become managing director"
● take unfair advantage of one's seniority.
"someone pulled rank and took my place"
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160 x 100 x 8 cm
2025
☉
and-
You, hating the other because your friends tell you they do. Them, hating you for what their kin went through. Bodies and minds remember, you see, intergenerational trauma seeps through the soil like an oil spill, suffocating any living thing it covers. Political violence arises from fear and from needs not being met. Did you know that when temperatures go up instances where protests erupt become more common? No slow-boiling frogs here, we’ll be going down with a bang, baby… At some point our cognitive function will begin to decline as a result of the atmosphere heating up and us inhaling all of it, one dirty microparticle at a time. That we might get to a point in the future where our collective knowledge might become inaccessible because we’ll be too stupid to understand seems to confound most. And so I must ask: do you know that people might think you’re ludicrous for stating the above, that you’re a killjoy? Do you even care?
and-
Trickle-down economics is, in itself, a form of violence, most self-aware people know this already. Perpetrated by those maladapted weirdos (read: psychopaths) buying up posh underground bunkers and pristine plots of land in New Zealand because they know they’ll need it when it gets too hot to breathe and they’ll come knocking down fences. The ones who have conditioned you like a dog, to alter your already-meagre life for a like. The last time society had seen an improvement in their overall quality of life compared to their parents was the Boomer generation (OK, Boomer!). Since then, the rope has been gradually tightened around our necks. A game that’s been rigged all along, ever since we’ve begun playing it. Consent means coercion. Dogs will fight for the last bone. A blue pill or a red pill will not treat the underlying cause of disease, it will simply offer a welcome distraction.
and then what? :)
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134 x 180 x 20 cm
2023
☉
Andreea Anghel’s assemblage of Catherine-The-Not-So-Great disrupts the linearity of history and preexistent images. On an emotionless and emptied background, the representation of a dress worn by the Russian elite in the 1780s is punitively attached to a blond wig and an antique agrarian tool. Wrestling inside the aluminium case, the image of a headless figure of the Russian colonial violence is now impaled by one of the working tools of repressed agrarian peasants. ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Text by Cristina Vasilescu and Maria Persu
Whether it is power over their own bodies or the power to lead societies, ultimately female power has been mistrusted by men, and in turn sometimes also by other women while operating in a male society. Take Catherine the second of Russia, as Andreea Anghel does in her Catherine-the-not-so-Great and consider the reactions her power inspired. Her actions and attitudes that we find most unfavourable today are still aligned with her male peers and yet as a woman she is judged differently. From Boudica to Thatcher, perhaps this is not real female power after all but woman forced to play the games and masquerade of a patriarch – albeit to notable effect. Perhaps female power at its best is not interested in singular recognition or in nation states and therefore often remains unrecognised. While all this has held our attention, with how much wisdom and skill have other unsung women held together families, tribes and societies without ever drawing blood?
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33 x 72 x 32 cm
2023
☉
Ladies and Gentlemen, it will only get worse from here!
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125 x 180 x 16 cm
2023
☉
From Wikipedia:
The book's title comes from a quote delivered by the character Morpheus in the 1999 film The Matrix: "Welcome to the desert of the real". Both Žižek's title and the line from The Matrix refer to a phrase in Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Part of this phrase appears in the following context of the book:
‘If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly [...] this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacrum [...] It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.’
Early in The Matrix, Neo used a hollowed-out book with the title Simulacra and Simulation to hide an illegal data disc which appeared in an early scene of the film. Later in the film, Morpheus utters these words after the main character Neo wakes up from his computer-generated virtual reality, experiencing the Real as a desolate, war-torn, yet spectacular geography. For Žižek, this represents a prime example of the 20th century's "passion for the Real," for which the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were the ultimate artistic expression. His argument is that because this passion was sublimated into the postmodern "passion for the semblance," Americans experienced the "return of the Real" in exactly the same way as Neo did in the film, i.e., as a nightmarish virtual landscape or "reality as the ultimate 'effect.'"
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117 x 45 x 20 cm
2023
☉
Imagine for a moment that someone was to lock the doors where you are right now. Assuming you had no emergency bottles of water, it would take you roughly seven days to die from dehydration. If you were lost in the desert with no water at all, it would take a day and a half.
When the body is forced into extreme situations like heat, cold, or water deprivation, it makes a tactical decision to withdraw resources from the least essential parts first. With dehydration, this initially happens in the kidneys. Our kidneys will reabsorb water that would have been used in urine, so this is why your urine gets darker when you are dehydrated — the urea concentration increases.
When this is still not enough, the body will draw water from your cells and organs to retain the necessary blood pressure to keep you ticking. Your eyes will contract to expose the conjunctiva, your lips will shrivel away entirely, your teeth and gums will project outward like on a skeleton, your skin blackens and dries out, and your tongue becomes a tiny piece of beef jerky. If you are cut, you are too dry to even bleed.
Only after days of this slow torture will you die. With less and less water, the blood in your body will thicken, and your blood pressure will drop drastically. This means that all of the oxygen and nutrients in your blood will take a lot longer to get to your organs, and so they become deprived. Your brain, heart, kidneys, and liver begin to fail. Ultimately, your brain will start to shrink from osmosis in an attempt to hydrate the body (the brain has a lot of water), which eventually will cause you to die.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Excerpt from ‘A gruesome death: the macabre science of dehydration’ (Jonny Thomson, published on Big Think on August 13th, 2021.
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170 x 100 x 16 cm
2023
☉
The Voight-Kampff test was a test used by the LAPD's Blade Runners to assist in determining whether or not an individual was a replicant. The machine used in the test measured bodily functions such as respiration, heart rate, blushing and pupillary dilation in response to emotionally provocative questions. It typically took twenty to thirty cross-referenced questions to detect a Nexus-6 replicant.[1]
"A very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the menacing air of a sinister insect. The VK is used primarily by Blade Runners to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring the degree of his empathic response through carefully worded questions and statements."
The Voight-Kampff machine is perhaps analogous to (and may have been partly inspired by) Alan Turing's work which propounded an artificial intelligence test — to see if a computer could convince a human (by answering set questions, etc.) that it was another human. The phrase Turing test was popularised by science fiction but was not used until years after Turing's death.
The VK test is also strongly reminiscent of the polygraph - a type of lie detector test that measures physiological responses against a pre-established baseline in order to determine whether or not a lie is being told. The line 'Just warming you up, that's all.' spoken by Holden to Leon in the opening scene suggests that a similar baseline is being established.
Also worthy of note is the 'fruit machine', a device developed for use in the Canadian military that aimed to measure pupillary dilation in response to erotic imagery in order to determine whether the subject was homosexual.
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180 x 86 x 55 cm
2023
☉
Thought a lot about Leni,
while toiling away in the studio in the former canteen at Pafawag,
where prisoners from Gross-Rosen would offer sustenance
to their ailing bodies,
Thought a lot about Leni,
directing her gaze at ebony skin that would have otherwise been cremated if there were a given chance,
Thought a lot about Leni,
rummaging through books describing the beauty of far away lands,
yet forever within our control,
Thought a lot about you, Leni,
how you used those ailing bodies for your art and then played the fool when their pain boiled over and surfaced for the whole world to see,
Thought a lot about you, Leni,
about how you’ve erased your history
and thought you’d get away with it,
and yet, here we are.
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125 x 180 x 16 cm
2023
☉
“Oh, come now, Nikita, you can’t keep on rummaging things like that.’
‘But you’ve read it with your own eyes, there don’t have enough of it to support the population!’
‘Bollocks! The Ministry never declared anything of the sort. You’re blowing things out of proportion. We’re on track to fulfil the plan for this year, that’s all there is to it.’
‘Yes, but where do you think they’ll find enough material to meet these quotas?’
‘Never-you-mind…come to think of it, I’d watch it if I were you.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You heard me well the first time. Good day!’
As Boris was going down the stairs Nikita’s eyes drifted to the side to one of the statues behind the columns, a huntress with a dog by her side. Such a perfect, serene face to it, too. He stood at the top of the stairs looking at it, as if in a daze. He knew there was no way that those quotas would be met. He had heard from his neighbour the week before that his son had received a summons. How could he receive a summons when he was just 19 years old? Similar stories could be heard throughout the neighbourhood, it would be only a matter of time until people would start putting two and two together. And then… ‘no, it can’t be…’ he told himself with disbelief. As he began descending the stairs, one step quicker than the last until he was practically running and tripping over the last ones, he momentarily threw a furtive glance back at it and could swear that one of its eyes had a small, barely visible, illuminated red dot.
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100 x 45 x 73 cm
2023
☉
Herron came home with a wide smile on his face. He closed the door to the underground dwelling he’d been squatting for the past 10 years without having come across a single other being, human or not. He turned on the radio station and adjusted the frequency dial so as to catch some transmissions.
‘…..sell off oil. I repeat, do not sell off oil. Current stocks are insufficient….’
‘Ugh, not this again’ he thought.
How on Earth was that message still around? It’d been decades since oil wells ran dry and no sooner had the news started spreading that most people decided to switch off all means of communication and go offline.
‘They must’ve forgotten to flip the switch on that one.’
After a while he grew tired of searching as the cold was slowly getting to him. He got up, went for his fur coat, and from a lined inner pocket took out a dusty cloth. Inside was an object he hadn’t come across in recent months, and these were always a treat to find. He gently unfurled the cloth, so old it was disintegrating in his hands. In it was a book with a drawing of a most peculiar animal. What were these called? - he struggled to remember…
…’A seal!’
Indeed, he’d forgotten all about what animals were. He gingerly opened the book, which was surprisingly intact. A strange writing, sharp but decorative, shaped like axes and swords, in bold lettering, lay inside in an unknown language.
‘𝔇𝔞𝔰 ℜ𝔢𝔦𝔠𝔥 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔗𝔦𝔢𝔯𝔢’ stood written at the beginning. And, after a few pages, a year, which someone attempted to erase but had done so imperfectly.
𝔅𝔢𝔯𝔩𝔦𝔫, 1937.
‘Huh.’
Unfazed, he tore the first page. From his coat he produced a box of matches. He crumpled the piece of paper, with its fancy lettering, on the floor and lit the match within his cupped hands, careful as to not let the minuscule flame die out. He lit the first page. His eyes lit up with it.
He then proceeded to carefully inspect each page, with its peculiar text and images of creatures he’d only heard of from his grandmother. After looking at each page he would rip it off and throw it in the small fire that was bouncing gleefully. His smile widened with each page being torn.
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134 x 180 x 8 cm
2023
☉
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
post-truth
adjective
1. relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."can we find reliable information in these post-truth times?"
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Dimensions variable
2023
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66 x 100 x 3 cm
2023
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62 x 100 x 3 cm
2023
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Mad Men
Found objects (antique walking stick, antique TV antenna), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
132 x 180 x 12 cm
2023
☉
From The Guardian (19.07.2022):
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Mad Men ended in 2015. The show is only a year either side away from overlapping perfectly with the presidency of Barack Obama. These were years in which, for all of the anguish surrounding 9/11, the war in Iraq and the financial crisis, it was still just about possible for Americans to build noble, unifying narratives about their society. It was still possible to believe, as Martin Luther King once said, that “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” And, yet, even as they cast Mad Men in a darker light, the following years have only added to the show’s resonance.
The office landscape depicted in Mad Men is a discordant symphony of microaggressions. The only people of colour are secretaries. LGBTQ people keep their true sexual identities to themselves. The women are routinely belittled, patronised and subjected to what we would now regard as textbook sexual harassment.
As Don Draper (Jon Hamm) knew, the US in the 20th century was primarily an exercise in branding. What Mad Men did, quite brilliantly, was explore the gaps between grim reality and that most enduring gambit of conceptual image creation: the American Dream. Since the turn of the century, US branding has become less confident. Most of the best dramas find a way of embedding tiny, personal, emotional nuances within wider, grander stories. Mad Men’s genius was to show that they were one and the same. Pretty much everyone in this show was wealthy and attractive. They were also, overwhelmingly, unhappy. This is the hinterland in which advertising thrives: where material solutions can be offered for existential problems.
From The Guardian (19.07.2022):
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Mad Men ended in 2015. The show is only a year either side away from overlapping perfectly with the presidency of Barack Obama. These were years in which, for all of the anguish surrounding 9/11, the war in Iraq and the financial crisis, it was still just about possible for Americans to build noble, unifying narratives about their society. It was still possible to believe, as Martin Luther King once said, that “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” And, yet, even as they cast Mad Men in a darker light, the following years have only added to the show’s resonance.
The office landscape depicted in Mad Men is a discordant symphony of microaggressions. The only people of colour are secretaries. LGBTQ people keep their true sexual identities to themselves. The women are routinely belittled, patronised and subjected to what we would now regard as textbook sexual harassment.
As Don Draper (Jon Hamm) knew, the US in the 20th century was primarily an exercise in branding. What Mad Men did, quite brilliantly, was explore the gaps between grim reality and that most enduring gambit of conceptual image creation: the American Dream. Since the turn of the century, US branding has become less confident. Most of the best dramas find a way of embedding tiny, personal, emotional nuances within wider, grander stories. Mad Men’s genius was to show that they were one and the same. Pretty much everyone in this show was wealthy and attractive. They were also, overwhelmingly, unhappy. This is the hinterland in which advertising thrives: where material solutions can be offered for existential problems.
[More..]
132 x 180 x 12 cm
2023
☉
Viktor went shivering past a brightly lit ad on that late December evening with a sharply dressed officer sitting at a tidy desk perched in front of a dimly lit window. It was snowing. He bought a Christmas present for Jana, his daughter, with the last of his allowance for the month. They'll have to make-do somehow until after the New Year, he only had pennies left in his pocket and Olga had been badgering him about food (or the lack of it) all winter. Oh well, he sighed.
The sleek, neo-noir imagery he was looking at had a neat text at the bottom announcing the latest corporate merger:
''SB- UBP- Securitate- NKVD- KGB- CDS- ŠtB- SS- Stasi- Gestapo- EK- UDBA
Experience today!
We are here for your own good. Don't resist. Assist.
We make your loved ones a thing of the past! Fast!
Now hiring!!!''
He wondered whether they paid well enough to afford water. If yes, he might just give in and sign up.
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180 x 132 x 18 cm
2022
☉
First responders at the scene managed to save the life of just one woman, brunette, who is currently in hospital with serious injuries. Her name has not yet been released to the public due to a concern for privacy. The remaining victims have now been publicly named: Miranda Blake, 21, redhead, Summer Sanders, 23, brunette, Selma Walters, 27, blonde, and Courtney Moss, 24, strawberry blonde, were having a girls night out at the local diner when they were accosted while leaving the establishment by the assumed perpetrator, M.H., a 27-year-old white male, who proceeded to shoot each one at point blank range with an automatic rifle. It has become apparent to prosecutors that one of the victims had gone to the same highschool as the alleged attacker. Chat messages sent by M.H. to the victim via Facebook suggest a romantic infatuation on the part of the male suspect towards the unsuspecting female who then proceeded to reject his advances for a mating partner positioned higher on the food chain, thus offering the species a better chance at evolutionary advancement.
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33 x 84 x 15 cm
2021-2022
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180 x 132 x 18 cm
2022
☉
From Wikipedia**:
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
On Sunday, 19 January 1919, Vaslav Nijinsky made one last public appearance; a solo improvised performance at the Suvretta House in St Moritz. The crowd consisted of skiers, hotel guests, wealthy visitors from abroad, war refugees, assorted social climbers. Bertha Asseo, a family friend, played the piano. Vaslav stood still for a good while before he finally started moving. His dance reflected a wide range of feelings from sadness, anger to joyfulness. His strong feelings towards the devastation of the war, and people who did nothing to stop it, were also reflected in his dance. [56]
…
Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks in 1919 he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum to Zurich. It reflected the decline of his household into chaos.[61] He elevated feeling and action in his writing. It combined elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate. Discovering the three notebooks of the diary years later, plus another with letters to a variety of people, his wife published a bowdlerised version of the diary in 1936, translated into English by Jennifer Mattingly.[1] She deleted about 40 per cent of the diary, especially references to bodily functions, sex, and homosexuality, recasting Nijinsky as an "involuntary homosexual." She also removed some of his more unflattering references to her and others close to their household. She moved sections around, obscuring the "march of events" obvious in the original version and toning down some of the odder portions, including trying to distinguish between sections in which he writes as God and others as himself (in the original all such sections are written the same.)[1]
From The New York Review***:
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
To my knowledge, it is the only sustained, on-the-spot (not retrospective) written account, by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis. Other important artists have gone mad—Hölderlin, Schumann, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud—but none of them left us a record like this.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
* The title of the show, 'The Well-Upholstered Nightmare', comes from a written review by Will Harrison published on The Baffler website on November 1st 2021.
** Wikipedia page on Vaslav Nijinsky
*** Joan Acocella, Secrets of Nijinsky - The New York Review, January 14th, 1999
From Wikipedia**:
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
On Sunday, 19 January 1919, Vaslav Nijinsky made one last public appearance; a solo improvised performance at the Suvretta House in St Moritz. The crowd consisted of skiers, hotel guests, wealthy visitors from abroad, war refugees, assorted social climbers. Bertha Asseo, a family friend, played the piano. Vaslav stood still for a good while before he finally started moving. His dance reflected a wide range of feelings from sadness, anger to joyfulness. His strong feelings towards the devastation of the war, and people who did nothing to stop it, were also reflected in his dance. [56]
…
Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks in 1919 he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum to Zurich. It reflected the decline of his household into chaos.[61] He elevated feeling and action in his writing. It combined elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate. Discovering the three notebooks of the diary years later, plus another with letters to a variety of people, his wife published a bowdlerised version of the diary in 1936, translated into English by Jennifer Mattingly.[1] She deleted about 40 per cent of the diary, especially references to bodily functions, sex, and homosexuality, recasting Nijinsky as an "involuntary homosexual." She also removed some of his more unflattering references to her and others close to their household. She moved sections around, obscuring the "march of events" obvious in the original version and toning down some of the odder portions, including trying to distinguish between sections in which he writes as God and others as himself (in the original all such sections are written the same.)[1]
From The New York Review***:
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
To my knowledge, it is the only sustained, on-the-spot (not retrospective) written account, by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis. Other important artists have gone mad—Hölderlin, Schumann, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud—but none of them left us a record like this.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
* The title of the show, 'The Well-Upholstered Nightmare', comes from a written review by Will Harrison published on The Baffler website on November 1st 2021.
** Wikipedia page on Vaslav Nijinsky
*** Joan Acocella, Secrets of Nijinsky - The New York Review, January 14th, 1999
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55 x 60 x 70 cm
2022
☉
Pam, wake the fuck up! We need to go get some burgers, I need to be at work by 5!!!!
Pam, wake the fuck up! We need to go get some burgers, I need to be at work by 5!!!!
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180 x 127 x 35 cm
2022
xX1990LoneRangerXx was late for a meeting with one of his his workmates from the office when it hit him again. Only this time it wasn’t the usual panic, body shaking violently, sweaty palms and all that crap, oh no… this time it was something peculiar.
He suddenly felt as if he was not part of this world anymore. As he was aiming for the subway, drifting by others as if he were a ghost, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he wasn’t a person anymore, but some sort of primitive organism whose only purpose was to make the big boys in grey suits happy. The more unhappy he was, the more pleased they were.
As he was descending towards the station he noticed that it had been remodelled into a marshland (no doubt a sign of gentrification, his sister had been babbling about these sorts of things for the past year, driving him mad), cold concrete steps gradually giving way to fecund earthy smells, green sludge and insects buzzing about their business. ‘Ugh’, he said to himself, he fucking hated bugs. The floor was now a slowly-moving non-descript liquid brown mix, and as soon as he inserted his foot into it he realised it’s goal was to suck as much of his body as possible under the surface. He stubbornly trudged through for a good ten metres until he realised there was no chance he’d make it all the way to the train, if there even was one running at all. He was in fact pathetically stuck. One guy made it a bit further than he’d had, at the expense of having his balding forehead and crooked nose barely sticking out from the brown muck, struggling to breathe. Poor bastard. At least he was only in it up to his waist.
They were nice enough to leave the advertisements on the walls though. I suppose that’s how you get people to look at them these days, trick them into what amounts to a slow, boring death. He didn’t mind dying, he would often think about it, especially while having his morning coffee, but then he’d remember about his dog and postpone it time and again.
As he was perusing the sleek vitrines one ad in particular caught his eye, featuring a glorious alphamale with golden locks paddling down a wild river in an inflatable raft.
A bloody raft. Why didn’t he think of buying one of those in the first place?
[More..]
Requiem for All That We Hold Dear
Found object (tubular chromed steel heater), dried Euphorbia characias ‘Tasmanian Tiger’ (killed off during an unusually-cold winter), wax candles.
93 x 90 x 15 cm
2022
☉
[More..]
180 x 125 x 13 cm
2022
☉
Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
'Cause you don't love me any more
Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when I lost your love
I wake-up in the morning, and I wonder
Why everything's the same as it was
I can't understand, no, I can't understand
How life goes on the way it does
Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said, "Good-bye"
Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm
(Why do these eyes of mine cry?)
Mmm, mmm, mmm
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said, "Good-bye"
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Songwriters: Arthur Kent / Sylvia Dee
The End of the World lyrics © Campbell Connelly And Co. Ltd., Music Sales Corp., Edward Proffitt Music, Crc Jianian Publishing, Music Sales Corp, Sentric Music Publishing Ltd, Beats Of Arm Songs
Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
'Cause you don't love me any more
Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when I lost your love
I wake-up in the morning, and I wonder
Why everything's the same as it was
I can't understand, no, I can't understand
How life goes on the way it does
Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said, "Good-bye"
Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm
(Why do these eyes of mine cry?)
Mmm, mmm, mmm
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said, "Good-bye"
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Songwriters: Arthur Kent / Sylvia Dee
The End of the World lyrics © Campbell Connelly And Co. Ltd., Music Sales Corp., Edward Proffitt Music, Crc Jianian Publishing, Music Sales Corp, Sentric Music Publishing Ltd, Beats Of Arm Songs
[More..]
180 x 130 cm.
2019
☉
Coleen Becker, art historian, described Aby Warburg’s work on the Mnemosyne Atlas (October 1929) as describing how fundamental images belonging to the Antiquity travel through time, or that of myths, resuscitated in recent times, signalling these elements as the manifestation of a collective psychic discomfort.
In simpler terms, according to Warburg, an older cultural form’s return usually signals a present psychological dysfunction, one that disrupts the individual as well as the collective mind. Becker furthers this idea by observing that ‘ since these images are encryption’s of ‘’eternal truths’’, they function as contemporary vehicles whose function is to establish control over the irrational, even if the inherent belief in their premonitory power in itself lacks logic. (1)
And yet, we piss on those statues because we drink too much.
Coleen Becker, art historian, described Aby Warburg’s work on the Mnemosyne Atlas (October 1929) as describing how fundamental images belonging to the Antiquity travel through time, or that of myths, resuscitated in recent times, signalling these elements as the manifestation of a collective psychic discomfort.
In simpler terms, according to Warburg, an older cultural form’s return usually signals a present psychological dysfunction, one that disrupts the individual as well as the collective mind. Becker furthers this idea by observing that ‘ since these images are encryption’s of ‘’eternal truths’’, they function as contemporary vehicles whose function is to establish control over the irrational, even if the inherent belief in their premonitory power in itself lacks logic. (1)
And yet, we piss on those statues because we drink too much.
[More..]
300 x 120 x 100 cm.
2019
☉
"High power, low self-esteem?
Let’s have one last postmodern party for our dying homeworld, shall we?
Coleen Becker, art historian, described Aby Warburg’s work on the Mnemosyne Atlas (October 1929) as describing how fundamental images belonging to the Antiquity travel through time, or that of myths, resuscitated in recent times, signalling these elements as the manifestation of a collective psychic discomfort.
In simpler terms, according to Warburg, an older cultural form’s return usually signals a present psychological dysfunction, one that disrupts the individual as well as the collective mind. Becker furthers this idea by observing that ‘ since these images are encryption’s of ‘’eternal truths’’, they function as contemporary vehicles whose function is to establish control over the irrational, even if the inherent belief in their premonitory power in itself lacks logic. (1)
And yet, we piss on those statues because we drink too much.
[More..]
70 x 30 x 10 cm
2018
☉
What seldom gets discussed in countries with high GDP is the way in which capital and generated wealth flow out of them, my focus being on two phenomena significant to two opposing social statuses: the upper class dislocates and disrupts markets by purchasing real estate in foreign countries, transforming dwellings and potential homes into hollowed-out investments; the lower class usually finds itself being employed by the former in a country foreign to them. This is the economic refugee. The glowing marquee shown here is an attempt at subversively nodding at a phenomenon that is widespread in Eastern Europe, particularly in the former Communist bloc, in which alienated workers transfer accumulated capital by means of international money transferring services either to families left back home or as an investment into their own existing or future real estate which will, just as in places like London, never get to be called or used as a home.
[More..]
2 min 27 sec, looped.
2018
☉
Given the slight, yet noticeable shift in Polish society (as well as other established economies worldwide) in the past few years one encounters very few obstacles in figuring out what can be defined as a possible source of the problem, namely the unequal flow of capital and what kind of consequences this has in the long term, the most obvious one being nazism with a spray tan that’s just the right shade for social media.
While most turn to activism and grassroots methods so as to counter these symptoms, we propose a simple choreography of dissent, to be performed in a public setting by whomever should circumstances require, as a way of honouring the late socialist playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht’s words as well as embodying a performative piece without inherent market value.
To quote Brecht:
‘’Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament only the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are people who want to eat the veal without slaughtering the calf.’’
[More..]
2018
☉
Ah, 4chan, such a wonderful cesspool of free speech. If one were to compare online domains to army bases, apart from the inherent networks that sum up both, there is a striking difference: one uses freedom as a shield for deviant behaviour, while one administers freedom as a catchphrase for occupation and coercion. One is chaos embodied, the other prizes discipline. Back in 1939 joining the army was a way of supporting your (synthetic, mediated) beliefs, while today joining the virtual army of trolls is, in some cases, a last resort to alienation. Joining the physical army meant displacement, today being part of a virtual army does not alter one’s presence, if anything it pushes members to signal to the entire world that they are present. Maybe that’s why sports pants don’t have buttons. There’s no time to lose.
[More..]
2017
☉
‘You haven’t had that dream in which you go on holiday to Kepler since you were a kid. Doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t have the time or the money to go anywhere. You’re too busy hating on thy neighbour anyway. You lower your eyes in shame at times when buying supplements at the shop when you see that robot’s hand with a golden ring on its finger. Does it have an on/off switch, you desperately wonder?’ So, are we going to admit that those starry-eyed dreams from the Space Race were misled from the beginning, because they failed to take into consideration humanity’s intrinsic shittiness? I mean, we had, and still have, far right extremists for fuck’s sake, on the streets, in our friends’ lists. Are we just going to dance our worries away or go to the opera like the little pretentious art pricks we claim to be?
For the past recent months I’ve been thinking incessantly about a couple of cult classics: Blade Runner and Ghost in The Shell, both films which I’ve only watched for the first time this year on purpose. Call it female intuition, but with some movies I feel when the time is right to finally experience them. We tend to focus so much on futurisms; accelerationism and devouring ourselves that we fail to see how blind we are. How can you possibly move forward and build when you can’t seem to notice the ruins around you? Notions of feminism, human rights, the anthropocene and the likes are thrown around in a feed, glanced at for 5 seconds and processed on the spot; no introspection, no soul-searching; maybe that’s why religion is both on the rise and crumbling at the same time: ain’t nobody got time for dat.
[More..]
Wrocław, Poland
andreea.anghel.cigaro@gmail.com
Artwork inquiries:
SUPRAINFINIT
suprainfinitgallery@gmail.com
+(40) 735 032 909
Born and raised in Romania in the early 90s, Andreea Anghel lives and works in Wrocław, Poland since 2011. Her work mixes ready-mades, found pieces of Midcentury furniture, assemblage as a writing technique, with newly built elements and curiosity cabinets that involve durational and emotional labour. Inspired by situations and elements that at first glance may seem common, Anghel’s artistic language reverts that easiness and brings forth uncanniness in a sensibility that channels both care and irony.
✧
Andreea Anghel’s artistic practice is characterized by the need to delve into visual and symbolic layers by combining ready-made objects with carefully designed sculptural or mise-en-scène elements. She accentuates manual work and emotional labour as important features of her work. The artist’s experiments often raise issues of identity, memory and the relationship between the entity and its surroundings. By overlapping layers that are seemingly distant from each other in terms of meaning and history, she creates three-dimensional compositions full of symbolism, which evoke personal memories, often forcing one to question the perception of reality. Light and sound in many of Anghel’s objects give a sense of the uncanny and at the same time create an intimate contact with the art installations.
The artist often uses materials from archival publications and various types of artefacts. Her body of work includes an ever-growing repository of images and objects collected from many sources. For example, Andreea sources from Soviet or Nazi propaganda publications in which utopian visions of everyday life and art have been transformed into a tool of colonialism. The artist extracts individual elements from them to visualise the nationalist and conservative aspirations of their authors. Many of the works in the series include objects surprisingly reminiscent of shop windows. They are filled with graphic features and specific lighting and evoke associations with the aesthetics of advertising known from previous decades.⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Romuald Demidenko
The artist adopts a gleaner’s gaze that animates through reinterpretation. The insertion of found objects, often in a disused state, fosters an anti-ad aesthetic, as commodity and waste collide in narratives of daily life. Artefacts of early and late modernity circulate non-chronologically inside her works, reversing references and the norms they are attached to. Building and archiving (personal) histories, pasts are reactivated in the present to question temporal linearity. Through the chosen images, pieces of furniture, church candles, modernist design fragments, the artist allows disruptive counter-memories to emerge.⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Cristina Vasilescu & Maria Persu
Art Fair
20-24.05.2026
Aleja Róż 1, 00-556 Warsaw, Poland
Weaving Together What Is Still Becoming - Institutional group show @ Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Ustka, Poland, curated by Agnieszka Kilian, Magdalena Ujma, Romuald Demidenko [28.03 – 31.05.2026]
Open System - Group show @ Bliss Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, curated by Katarzyna Piskorz [13.03 - 11.04.2026]
12.:47 PM ◦ 11:47 AM - Solo show @ ZETO, Wrocław, Poland [04.02 - 05.02.2026]
2025
The Blind Man - Institutional solo show @ 66P Subjective Institution of Culture, Wrocław, Poland, curated by Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka [4.12.2025 - 21.02.2026]
The House with Golden Nostrils - Group show @ The Darvas-La Roche House, Oradea, Romania, curated by Diana Marincu and Mihai Toth [7.11.2025 - 07.02.2026]
Inheritance - Institutional group show @ BWA Wrocław, Poland, curated by Ania Batko [17.10.2025 - 25.01.2026]
Only Ghosts Move Forward - Group show @ Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, Romania [25.09 - 14.11.2025]
thank you for recording - Group show @ Turnus Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, curated by Andreea Goța [17.07 - 10.08.2025]
There were times I wanted to change the world - Official collateral event of the Art Encounters Biennial - Group show @ Paltim, Timișoara, Romania, curated by Diana Marincu [31.05 - 13.07.2025]
Unleashing the Sins of Sculpture - A survey exhibition of contemporary Romanian female sculptors - Group show @ Scânteia+, Bucharest, Romania, curated by Cristina Vasilescu and Georgiana Tidorescu [27.03 - 8.05.2025]
One Eye Laughing, the Other Crying. Art From Romania. Ovidiu Șandor Collection - Institutional group show @ International Cultural Centre, Krakow, Poland [8.03 - 20.07.2025]
2024
Calling things that don't have names - Group show @ Copperfield, London [05.10 - 23.11.2024]
UNITED NATIONS - Group show @ Galeria W Y, Łódź, Poland [12.09 - 30.09.2024]
Skin of The Shapeshifter - Group show @ Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, Romania, curated by Cristina Vasilescu [23.11.2023 - 09.03.2024]
2023
Crash Club - Group show @ Pawilon Bliska_12 , Warsaw, Poland (Warsaw Gallery Weekend), curated by Philip Ortelli [28.09 - 01.10.2023]
Sediments. The Matter-Image - Group show @ Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest, Romania [21.06 - 30.07.2023]
AFFAIR Warsaw | meltdown - Group show @ Piktogram Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, curated by Michał Woliński and Cristina Vasilescu [26.05 - 01.07.2023]
UNTITLED (EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE) - Duo institutional show - Andreea Anghel / Radek Szlaga @ MOS, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland, curated by Romuald Demidenko [13.05 - 25.06.2023]
Volume By Layers - Group show @ CazarmaU, Timișoara, Romania, curated by Ciprian Mureșan [04.05 - 30.11.2023]
2022
The Well-Upholstered Nightmare - Solo show @ Zina Gallery, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, curated by Flaviu Rogojan [8.07 - 1.10.2022]
2021
The Current Affair of Some Young Romanian Artists - Group show @ Ivan Gallery, Bucharest, Romania, curated by Robert Băjenaru [8.09 - 9.10.2021]
Silver Shining Tears at 3 a.m - Duo show Andreea Anghel / Łukasz Stokłosa @ Galeria Śmierć Człowieka, Warsaw, Poland, curated by Kamil #2 [18.07 - 30.07.2021]
HEARTBEAT 20 (New Entries in the MNAC Collection) - Institutional group show @ Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara, Romania [14.05 - 11.07.2021]
12 Years After. A Survey of Romanian Art in 180 Works - Exhibition of Acquisitions for the Museum's Permanent Collection @ National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, Romania [11.12.2020 – 28.03.2021]
2020
SIMULTAN FESTIVAL XV. ”UNSEEN” - Timișoara, Romania [27.09 - 3.10.2020]
Exception of (not) being - Online-only group show curated by Essenza Club and Rhizome Parking Garage (Ongoing since August 2020)
2019
I really miss Adorno - Solo show @ Galerie Klubovna, Brno, Czech Republic, curated by Marta Fišerová [04.12 - 22.12.2019]
CALLOSUM - Group show @ Mobius Gallery, Bucharest, Romania, curated by Adriana Blidaru [23.08 - 25.09.2019]
Know Every Way Out Of Your House - Solo show @ Cave Gallery, Wroclaw, Poland, curated by Barbara Żłobińska and Mariusz Maślanka [15.03 - 31.03.2019]
Contemporary Visions 9 - Group show @ BEERS London, United Kingdom [1.03 - 30.03.2019]
Sanguinaccio Dolce - Kitchen For A Despicable Ruse - Group show @ Atelier 35 / Bucharest, Romania, curated by Carmen Casiuc [8.12.2018 - 31.01.2019]
2018
Where Do We Go From Here? - Group show @ Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest, Romania [19.10 - 28.10.2018]
Media Art Festival Arad 5th Edition: De Rerum Natura - Group show @ Arad Museum Complex, Natural History Section, Arad, Romania. Curated by Călin Man and Ileana Selejan. [5.10 - 3.11.2018]
I'd Rather Not Say Hello But Something Else Instead - Duo show Andreea Anghel / Mocan Alexandra @ Matca Artspace, Cluj-Napoca, Romania [07.06 - 10.07.2018]
2017
Plymouth Contemporary Open - Group show @ Peninsula Art Gallery / KARST, Plymouth, UK [15.07 - 02.09.2017]
2015
‘ppm - pages-per-minute’ - Pop-up group show as part of the AiciAcolo Pop Up Gallery program, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, [30.10.2015]
‘National Exhibition of the Top Art Diplomas from Polish Academies of Art’ - Group show @ The Great Armory and Aula of the Academy of Art and Design in Gdansk, Poland [17.07 - 23.08.2015]
MNAC - National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania
The Ovidiu Șandor Collection
- 2011 Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Poland,
Erasmus Scholarship, summer semester, Visual Arts.
Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design Wrocław, Poland
- Printmaking Department ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Masters’ Degree: Experimental Printmaking and Visual Arts (graduated 2015)
Plymouth Contemporary 2017 - New Artist Award
300 Romanian Artists 1990-2020 - Published by Propagarta (2024)
After Sculpture / Sculpture After - edited by Sorina Jecza - Published by the Triade Foundation (2024)
Last updated 24.04.2026
(SOLO SHOW)
12.:47 PM • 11:47 AM
Durational intervention
⌘
Department of Electronic Computing Technology (ZETO) building
Ofiar Oświęcimskich 7-3, Wrocław, Poland
Found objects (antique ceramic wall hooks) UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
170 x 100 x 16 cm
2023
⌘
The Voight-Kampff test was a test used by the LAPD's Blade Runners to assist in determining whether or not an individual was a replicant. The machine used in the test measured bodily functions such as respiration, heart rate, blushing and pupillary dilation in response to emotionally provocative questions. It typically took twenty to thirty cross-referenced questions to detect a Nexus-6 replicant.[1]
"A very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the menacing air of a sinister insect. The VK is used primarily by Blade Runners to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring the degree of his empathic response through carefully worded questions and statements."
The Voight-Kampff machine is perhaps analogous to (and may have been partly inspired by) Alan Turing's work which propounded an artificial intelligence test — to see if a computer could convince a human (by answering set questions, etc.) that it was another human. The phrase Turing test was popularised by science fiction but was not used until years after Turing's death.
The VK test is also strongly reminiscent of the polygraph - a type of lie detector test that measures physiological responses against a pre-established baseline in order to determine whether or not a lie is being told. The line 'Just warming you up, that's all.' spoken by Holden to Leon in the opening scene suggests that a similar baseline is being established.
Also worthy of note is the 'fruit machine', a device developed for use in the Canadian military that aimed to measure pupillary dilation in response to erotic imagery in order to determine whether the subject was homosexual.
Found objects (antique walking stick, antique TV antenna), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
132 x 180 x 12 cm
2023
⌘
From The Guardian (19.07.2022):
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Mad Men ended in 2015. The show is only a year either side away from overlapping perfectly with the presidency of Barack Obama. These were years in which, for all of the anguish surrounding 9/11, the war in Iraq and the financial crisis, it was still just about possible for Americans to build noble, unifying narratives about their society. It was still possible to believe, as Martin Luther King once said, that “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” And, yet, even as they cast Mad Men in a darker light, the following years have only added to the show’s resonance.
The office landscape depicted in Mad Men is a discordant symphony of microaggressions. The only people of colour are secretaries. LGBTQ people keep their true sexual identities to themselves. The women are routinely belittled, patronised and subjected to what we would now regard as textbook sexual harassment.
As Don Draper (Jon Hamm) knew, the US in the 20th century was primarily an exercise in branding. What Mad Men did, quite brilliantly, was explore the gaps between grim reality and that most enduring gambit of conceptual image creation: the American Dream. Since the turn of the century, US branding has become less confident. Most of the best dramas find a way of embedding tiny, personal, emotional nuances within wider, grander stories. Mad Men’s genius was to show that they were one and the same. Pretty much everyone in this show was wealthy and attractive. They were also, overwhelmingly, unhappy. This is the hinterland in which advertising thrives: where material solutions can be offered for existential problems.
Found objects (antique 'Milicja' Polish secret police gloves and baton), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
132 x 180 x 12 cm
2023
⌘
Viktor went shivering past a brightly lit ad on that late December evening with a sharply dressed officer sitting at a tidy desk perched in front of a dimly lit window. It was snowing. He bought a Christmas present for Jana, his daughter, with the last of his allowance for the month. They'll have to make-do somehow until after the New Year, he only had pennies left in his pocket and Olga had been badgering him about food (or the lack of it) all winter. Oh well, he sighed.
The sleek, neo-noir imagery he was looking at had a neat text at the bottom announcing the latest corporate merger:
''SB- UBP- Securitate- NKVD- KGB- CDS- ŠtB- SS- Stasi- Gestapo- EK- UDBA
Experience today!
We are here for your own good. Don't resist. Assist.
We make your loved ones a thing of the past! Fast!
Now hiring!!!''
He wondered whether they paid well enough to afford water. If yes, he might just give in and sign up.
Found objects (antique 'Milicja' Polish secret police gun holster, press conference microphone), latex paint, UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
134 x 180 x 8 cm
2023
⌘
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
post-truth
adjective
1. relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."can we find reliable information in these post-truth times?"
tissues,
plastic cups,
bronze hunting dog statuette (with rabbit),
^digitally added^ burn stain,
antique fire extinguisher⎼ etched text on the extinguisher reads: PUSTA (EMPTY)
Chromed steel, wood, foam, 76 x 90 x 15 cm.
2018-2019
*dog sculpture, pétanque ball⎼
*billiard ball⎼
Durational intervention
⌘
Department of Electronic Computing Technology (ZETO) building
Ofiar Oświęcimskich 7-3, Wrocław, Poland
(*one can of course argue that technological advancement is what has allowed us to survive as a species in the first place, e.g. the discovery of fire and the crafting of weapons, the invention of the wheel, etc.)
⌘
Having been granted access to the legendary ZETO building in Wrocław, Poland for a fleetingly short amount of time (23 hours in total), the photographic documentation above is a rushed attempt at archiving impulsive gestures within an abandoned space as an attempt at articulating the above-mentioned ideas while in dialogue with a building which acts as a significant historical turning point in terms of technological advancement, a place where IBM machines hummed together under Socialism until reality came crashing down.
[More photos, text, etc.]
saliva.live
Tired Mass
O FLUXO
KUBAPARIS
Low Ground Pressure
Artwork Production / Install: Sylwester Golachowski
Text (unless otherwise mentioned): Andreea Anghel
Photography: Andreea Anghel
Location access: Wyspa Tamka
(GROUP SHOW)
Open System
13/03/2026 - 11/04/2026
Andreea Anghel | Magdalena Lazar | Piotr Lewandowski | Max Radawski | Paweł Zaręba
curator: Katarzyna Piskorz
bliss gallery
Szpitalna 5/7, 00-031
Warsaw, Poland
Exhibition view
Max Radawski - I Do Not Place Unequal Weights on My Scale
Exhibition view
Andreea Anghel - The Magic Trick
Max Radawski - Preliminary Work, Bleaching the Black Rabbit
Magdalena Lazar - How to melt a heart of steel
Exhibition view
13/03/2026 - 11/04/2026
Andreea Anghel | Magdalena Lazar | Piotr Lewandowski |
Max Radawski | Paweł Zaręba
curator: Katarzyna Piskorz
bliss gallery
Szpitalna 5/7, 00-031
Warsaw, Poland
The exhibition Open System grows out of the experience of a place. A year ago, we opened the doors of bliss at Szpitalna 5, in a space scarred and layered, with palimpsests of former plasters and wooden parquet floors emerging from beneath sheets of roofing felt, in a tenement building that since the late nineteenth century functioned as a site of work and exchange of services, and that survived the war, modernising losses, and successive changes of use. Thinking about the gallery, its location, and about Warsaw led us to the association with an open system—something alive, changeable, remaining in constant exchange with its surroundings. From the very beginning of its existence, the tenement building has operated as an open system, and the gallery and each exhibition function in this way as well: paintings respond to light, space responds to the presence of viewers, nothing is autonomous; each work enters into relation with another, with the architecture, and with the body of the person standing in front of it. The exhibition features objects by Andreea Anghel, photographs and spatial realisations by Magdalena Lazar and Maks Radawski, video and an installation by Piotr Lewandowski, as well as alucobond works by Paweł Zaręba. The works engage with themes of circulation, transformation, fragility, and the tension between what protects and what exposes to external forces. Open System thus becomes a story about flow—of materials, energy, history, and presence—about a place and relationships that remain porous and, precisely because of this, alive.
[More photos, text, etc.]
O FLUXO
saliva.live
2025
(SOLO SHOW)
The Blind Man
(...The second number of The Blind Man will appear as soon as YOU have sent sufficient material for it…)
☉
Curator: Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka
4.12.2025 ⎼⎼⎼⎼ 21.02.2026
66P - Subjective Institution of Culture
Księcia Witolda 66, Wrocław, Poland
Love
Found objects (antique baseball bat), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
190 x 80 x 12 cm
2025
Exhibition view
Stürm / Storm
Found objects (Christmas tinsel garland), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass, epoxy glue.
160 x 100 x 8 cm
2025
Exhibition view
The Vessel
Found objects (vintage Swiss Army knife), Swarovski crystals, UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
160 x 100 x 8 cm
2025
(...The second number of The Blind Man will appear as soon as YOU have sent sufficient material for it…)
☉
Curator: Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka
4.12.2025 ⎼⎼⎼⎼ 21.02.2026
66P - Subjective Institution of Culture
Księcia Witolda 66, Wrocław, Poland
☉
The premise of the artist’s proposed exhibition at 66P comes from one of the first iterations of Dadaism in America as a result of Marcel Duchamp’s arrival in New York City, namely ‘The Blind Man’ journal, founded by him alongside Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood, and its symbolic importance today. Dada as a militant movement had an iconoclastic history of violent intervention in the public space, especially in Europe, ironically given the fact that its roots were definitively anti-war and of a pacifist nature, which reverberates to this day as a hybrid type of political activism. The magazine’s function was that of an incubator for art which was anti-establishment at the time, and its legacy is that even though it promoted art from the periphery it contributed to bringing Dada closer to the limelight.
Focused on machines, found objects, text and advertising as a conceptual tool, ‘The Blind Man’ in this case finds an idiosyncratic interpretation in the hands of the artist. Blindness can be something one is born with (in most cases this is the ‘dark’ type of blindness where the optic nerve’s connection to the brain is non-existent or altered beyond repair); it can also be a result of an accident or illness (in some cases one can actually perceive light without having the ability of make out shapes and objects), and then there is wilful blindness, where people, for a variety of reasons, choose to exhibit blind spots towards their surrounding reality (in this case the blindness is unequivocally ideological in origin, a mixture of light and darkness in one’s soul instead of the brain). One can attempt to find a way of measuring the amount of light being allowed in based on a person’s statute among their peers - a blind man can be anybody, ranging from a lonely tramp to a cherished member of society - since a wilfully blind individual can, for example, attract scorn from those around him or go so far as to become an important socio-political figure. The artworks proposed here are an attempt at glimpsing into this dichotomy of light versus darkness in an individual and how this relates to society as a whole.
☉
[More photos, text, etc.]
saliva.live
Low Ground Pressure
UntitledDb
easttopics
SZUM
MOST Magazine
(GROUP SHOW)
La maison aux narines d’or
group exhibition ⎼⎼⎼⎼ Curators: Diana Marincu & Mihai Toth
Artists: ⎼⎼⎼⎼ Ana Adam, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Andreea Anghel. Apparatus 22, Marius Bercea, loana Bătrânu, Victor Brauner, Geta Brătescu, André Cadere, Lena Constante-Brauner, Constantin Flondor, Dora García, Adrian Ghenie, Ana Golici, lon Grigorescu, Jacques Herold, Isidore Isou, Alicja Kwade, Gherasim Luca, Alex Mirutziu, Ciprian Mureșan, loana Nemeș, Mircea Nicolae, Miklós Onucsán, Christian Paraschiv, Dan Perjovschi, Hedda Sterne, Ovidiu Toader, Tristan Tzara, Ion Țuculescu, Andra Ursuța
The Darvas-La Roche House ⎼⎼⎼⎼ 7.11.2025 → 7.02.2026
Str. Iosif Vulcan 11, Oradea, Romania
Ion Țuculescu - The dolls, the cloud and the butterflies - oil on canvas, 46,5 x 56 cm (1957)
✧
The dolls, the cloud and the butterflies by lon Țuculescu is a vibrant, expressive painting that combines folkloric symbolism with a childlike, fantastical imagination. Rendered in thick, textured brushstrokes, the composition radiates movement and vitality, merging elements of nature, play, and ritual. Typical of Țuculescu's late style, the work blends naive figuration with a powerful chromatic energy, evoking both innocence and spiritual intensity.
Jacques Hérold - Mimétisme de l'objet. Verres à boire: Paolo Uccello (1) Sade (2) Alfred Jarry (3) André Breton (4) Mille de Sombreuil (5) Benjamin Péret (6) - charcoal on paper, 417 x 129.5 cm (1945-1950)
Andreea Anghel - Unit of Carelessness - found objects (1920s chromed steel frame from a Hynek Gottwald Bauhaus daybed, tension arches from Mart Stam 534 chairs, steel spring, foam, nylon rope), bandages, 87 x 65 x 16 cm (2022)
✧
The work juxtaposes the rigour of functional design with seemingly playful interventions, suggesting wear, accident, or abandonment. Through this tension between order and improvisation, the artist questions the idea of the useful object, proposing metaphors about the body and vulnerability, and transforms industrial remnants into a poetic commentary on contemporary precarity.
Magdalena Abakanowicz - From the Crowd - burlap, resin, wood, 119 x 31 x 28 cm (1989)
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Abakanowicz's work reflects on the fragility of the human condition, the tension between self and society, often shaped by political and historical trauma. From the Crowd is a powerful sculptural work exploring themes of individuality, anonymity, and collective human experience. The headless, life-sized figure, rendered in rough, textured material, evokes a sense of vulnerability and dehumanisation.
Ovidiu Toader - Coralia - inflatable stainless steel, 200 x 75 x 40 cm (2024)
Ana Adam - The dwarf saves the sun - textile collage, 68 x 145 cm (2022)
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Ovidiu Toader - Coralia is a biomorphic stainless steel sculpture building up the skeletal structure of a fantastical marine organism or a coral-like entity in motion. Its elongated, root-like extensions suggest fragility and expansion, while the polished, folded plates at the top resemble protective shells or emerging tissue. Toader merges organic morphology with industrial material, creating a hybrid being that speaks to evolution, adaptation, and the tension between nature and artificiality.
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Ana Adam - The Dwarf Saves the Sun by Ana Adam combines subtle irony with a minimal yet deeply suggestive visual language. Created on a textile background with a discreet pattern, the composition integrates three-dimensional elements - women's black stockings and a miniature embroidered figure, the dwarf, recurrent motif of the artist- generating a contrast between everyday materials and the poetic gesture of the narrative. The work explores the relationship between fragility
and courage, between small gestures and great meanings, offering a reflection on the human condition through a humorous and emotional lens.
Victor Brauner - Frise de Personnages au chat vert - ink and watercolour on paper, 14 x 66 cm (1929)
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The work is populated by hybrid and symbolic characters arranged in a fluid narrative sequence. The combination of delicate lines, minimal chromatic interventions, and expressionist details creates an atmosphere of personal mythology, where the real and the fantastical coexist. The work reflects Brauner's interest in the surrealist register, esoteric symbolism, and the freedom of visual associations, transforming the image into a graphic poem of the subconscious.
Constantin Flondor - Trigona - metal, lightbulb, 45 × 45 x 45 cm (1974)
Andra Ursuța - Untitled - aqua resin, 36 x 63 x 27 cm (2015)
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Constantin Flondor - Trigona is a modular sculpture made of glossy metal elements arranged in a three dimensional geometric structure that suggests an abstract organism in expansion.
Composed of intersecting prismatic forms, the work explores the relationship between order and variation, between mathematics and visual perception. The multiple reflections of the metal surface amplify the sense of movement and instability, turning the object into an optical game that constantly shifts the viewer's perspective. In line with the artist's interest in science, nature, and systematisation, Trigona functions as a model of growth and structure, positioned at the intersection of art, experiment, and constructivist thinking.
✧
Andra Ursuța - Untitled is a sculptural object that combines geometric rigidity with unsettling anthropomorphic detail. The white, pipe-like form ends in a sharp, obelisk type shape, onto which small casts of human body parts, such as an ear and an eye, are embedded, creating a tension between industrial design and corporeal fragility. The work evokes both weapon and prosthesis, humour and threat. Andra Ursuta's characteristic blend of dark absurdity and bodily symbolism transforms the object into a fragmented, almost defensive organism, reflecting on vulnerability, violence, and the uncomfortable borders between human and object.
Adrian Ghenie - Untitled (Darwin) - oil on canvas, 65 x 44 cm (2014)
Alicja Kwade - Little Be-Hide - granite, patinated bronze, mirror, 110 x 75 x 73 cm (2022)
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Adrian Ghenie - Untitled (Darwin) explores the figure and theory of Charles Darwin through a fragmented and intensely expressionist approach. The painterly gesture and chromatic layering suggest the tension between evolution and entropy, between science and the subconscious. The work reflects Adrian Ghenie's interest in key moments in history, reimagining the portrait as a space of trauma and transformation.
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Alicja Kwade - Little Be Hide is a sculptural installation that uses a simple yet precise arrangement of a natural stone, its painted counterpart, and a vertical mirror to question perception and reality. The mirror creates the illusion of a single continuous object, blurring the boundary between what is real and what is constructed. The work embodies the artist's ongoing inquiry into physics, philosophy, and the unstable nature of what we accept as visible fact.
Tristan Tzara - Papillons Dada - offset printing, 7 × 10,7 cm (1920)
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Tristan Tzara - Papillons Dada consists of a series of small printed cards, "butterflies" of paper, circulated as poetic and subversive manifestos of the Dada movement. Each card repeats the same statement, "Dada ne signifie RIEN" ("Dada means NOTHING"), followed by a playful provocation inviting the reader not to waste time on a word that has no meaning. Printed in different colours and formats, the work reflects Dada's strategy of dissemination, chance, and anti-authoritarian humour. These fragments function simultaneously as artwork, manifesto, and linguistic sabotage, encapsulating Tristan Tzara's radical redefinition of art as an act of disruption rather than representation.
Hedda Sterne - Metamorphosis - collage and pencil on cardboard, 40 x 30 cm
André Cadere - 802010300 45 2x19 - wood, 94.5 x 4 cm (24/01/1976)
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Hedda Sterne - Metamorphosis is a delicate work that combines drawing and cut or torn paper to evoke a fluid transformation between human and animal forms. With soft contours and minimal details, Sterne creates a poetic image of metamorphosis, where consciousness, instinct, and imagination blend. The piece reflects the artist's interest in the boundary between inner and outer worlds, rendering transformation as both
psychological and organic.
✧
André Cadere - This is an emblematic example of the famous Barres de bois rond, that is, coloured wooden rods composed of hand-painted segments arranged in mathematically structured yet only seemingly regular sequences. The work features alternating colours (white, orange, and purple) arranged in a rhythm that appears systematic but intentionally includes small deviations, undermining the idea of absolute order. Simply leaned against the wall, the rod is not a fixed object in a space; it exists in potential movement, reflecting the artist's gesture of carrying and freely placing it in museums, galleries, or public spaces. Through this minimal intervention, Cadere questions art institutions, the notion of authority, and the status of the art object, transforming a geometric form into a manifesto of freedom and the disruption of conventions.
Christian Paraschiv - Muzzle (series) - mixed media on photograph (1971)
group exhibition ⎼⎼⎼⎼ Curators: Diana Marincu & Mihai Toth
Artists: ⎼⎼⎼⎼ Ana Adam, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Andreea Anghel. Apparatus 22, Marius Bercea, loana Bătrânu, Victor Brauner, Geta Brătescu, André Cadere, Lena Constante-Brauner, Constantin Flondor, Dora García, Adrian Ghenie, Ana Golici, lon Grigorescu, Jacques Herold, Isidore Isou, Alicja Kwade, Gherasim Luca, Alex Mirutziu, Ciprian Mureșan, loana Nemeș, Mircea Nicolae, Miklós Onucsán, Christian Paraschiv, Dan Perjovschi, Hedda Sterne, Ovidiu Toader, Tristan Tzara, Ion Țuculescu, Andra Ursuța
The Darvas-La Roche House ⎼⎼⎼⎼ 7.11.2025 → 7.02.2026
Str. Iosif Vulcan 11, Oradea, Romania
✧
An exhibition produced by Oradea Heritage and Art Encounters Foundation, "La maison aux narines d’or" (The House with Golden Nostrils) is organised around three thematic registers that function like reading lenses: magical realism, the phantom of identity, and institutional critique, "activated" by three works that open up these avenues, belonging to artists loana Nemeș, Andra Ursuța, and André Cadere. Each chapter functions as an incision into the layers of art history, architecture, the artistic system, and visual knowledge.
The Darvas-La Roche House is itself a living archive of local history, a space that preserves the layers of a complex cultural, social, and political past. Within this exhibition project, the House is transformed from a heritage monument into an active participant in a contemporary visual dialogue, a place where memory and the present intertwine.
The selection of works from the Ovidiu Șandor collection opens up a narrative path that not only highlights the continuity of artistic discourse, but also the potential of the art collection to build bridges between generations and sensibilities. The encounter between contemporary art and architectural heritage opens up the possibility of a new perception of the cultural identity of the city of Oradea: a fluid, layered identity, constantly in the process of negotiation between what we inherit, what we consume, and what we reinvent.⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Diana Marincu & Mihai Toth
[More photos, text, etc.]
(GROUP SHOW)
Inheritance
group exhibition
opening: 17.10.2025. 19.00
Curator: Ania Batko
Artists: Andreea Anghel, Przemek Branas, Rafał Bujnowski, Paweł Marcinek, Aleksandra Nenko, Dominika Olszowy, Mikołaj Sobotka
BWA Studio
ul. Ruska 46a/301, 50-079 Wrocław, Poland
Exhibition view
Mikołaj Sobótka - Man Works His Ass Off His Whole Life and Gets Nothing Out of It. (2024)
Aleksandra Nenko - If the Wall Should Ever Fall, All the Fires Will Go Out (2021)
✸
“Women. wake up; the tocsin of reason sounds throughout the universe, recognise your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice. fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The torch of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation." So wrote Olympe de Gouges in 1791. The French feminist and abolitionist published these words in the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, which was circulated during the time of the French Revolution. A committed activist during the revolution, De Gouges was also one of its eventual victims, sent to the guillotine by Robespierre two years later. The revolution failed to change the social and legal status of women. The only right to which they were entitled was the right to die.
The barricade is a universal symbol of rebellion and resistance. An object of compact architecture, a makeshift fortification erected in the street, it provides shelter, but it also divides the world into camps of us versus them.
The two sides of the barricade. The barrier is cobbled together from whatever is within arm's reach: paving stones, bricks, furniture, paintings, debris. The composite structure doubles as a metonym for revolution, the fight for rights and social justice, oft-depicted in paintings such as Delacroix's seminal Liberty Leading the People.
Created from fragments of metal waste, Aleksandra Nenko's work is a barricade that can serve not only as scenographic backdrop, a stage for the performance of a political-artistic manifesto, but as an image in and of itself, an animation of graffiti, a banner. It isn't slogans it is emblazoned with so much as drawings, including a representation of the many-headed Hydra, a mythological monster which, across the centuries, has been used to symbolise assorted enemies and classes. To revolutionaries, it symbolised the aristocracy; for patricians, it was a black throng of polycephalic peasantry. The fire illuming the drawings can be understood as a metaphor for social anger, but also as a symbol of the ravenous insatiability and greed of the capitalist system. The work stems from mass protests for women's rights catalysed in 2020.
Paweł Marcinek - One Long Day (2023)
✸
"Open space" is regarded as the epitome of modernity, collaboration, and transparency. In reality, it is emblematic of power structures, a metaphor for late capitalism— a system that has eliminated privacy and normalised surveillance, and which above all else prioritises maximal individual productivity at minimal operational cost. So-called "open space" isn't solely about Open Space the architectural concept, but about the unscreened exposure of an employee's work, thoughts, and bodies, round-the-clock availability to managers and coworkers, and subjection to performance-tracking algorithms.
The open-space concept dates back to the 1950s, with such interiors described in terms of an "office landscape." The open configuration was designed to mimic factory floors. Even if there is no assembly line in the former, both settings revolve around the scrutiny of the panopticon and operate according to the imperative of capitalist efficiency. Open-space arrangements become a stage where small talk, motivational mantras, and persistent positivity are the dialogue and hierarchical power plays unfold as tragicomedy.
The television series The Office famously captured this dynamic, zeroing in on how open-space configurations beget non-stop proximity, scrutinisation, and confrontation. Employees are ogled by their boss, monitored by cameras, and left exposed to long-running conflicts between each other. Each joke and gesture within the pecking order becomes part of a contest for attention.
Paweł Marcinek’s irreverent works, rendered in the style of marginalia drawings, may be experienced with an ear toward corporate jargon - a lexicon of workplace advancement, affirmative catchphrases, and procrastination.
Przemek Branas - There Are So Many Things I Would Like to Touch, So Many People I Would Like to Touch (2025)
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The term "white collar," credited to Upton Sinclair, was popularised by the sociologist C. Wright Mills, used in reference to white-collar workers typically employed in sectors including administration, services, finance, management, and the law. Unlike blue-collar workers (manual labourers), white-collar workers generally perform office work and, significantly, inhabit the urban environment. Mills describes them as symptomatic of the middle class, classifying their focuses as information gathering, analysis, oversight, and accounting. This group lacks their own means of production or workshops.
While white-collar work may be regarded as "clean" and prestigious, as an ingrowth of corporate culture it has become associated with alienation, overtime, burnout, and empty tasks devoid of meaning.
Despite their role in upholding the capitalist hierarchy while boasting perceived power, white-collar workers by and large function in managerial positions, economically dependent on the corporations they serve and afforded only limited agency. In 2013, anthropologist David Graeber wrote that more than half of full-time jobs in the Western world are utterly pointless and even socially injurious, spawning frustration, mobbing, and workplace resentment. Such "bullshit jobs”, as Graeber terms them, are essential not for society as a whole, but for perpetuating a capitalist status quo apprehensive at the prospect of people having too much time for themselves. At present, the white-collar job has undergone a significant shift, with remote work erasing the boundary between home and the workplace, contributing to isolation while offering an illusory sense of freedom.
Premek Branas' work is a scaled-up shirt made of papier máché, an amalgam of recycled magazines from discount stores, advertisements, and waste paper regurgitating meaningless information. The result is a hollow phantom, its shell snacked on by snails; a grotesque uniform that has stitched itself to the body. There Are So Many Things I Would Like to Touch, So Many People / Would Like to Touch is a white collar adrift on a purgatorial business trip.
Exhibition view
Paweł Marcinek - The Shoemakers (2025)
✸
"Hold it, pound it, thread it—jab it! Boots, boots-are rising up, emerging out of the nothingness of boorish slime, from the eternal, pure idea of the boot, looming up out of the abyss, ideal and empty as a hundred million barns.
Hammer, hammer—well-hammered boots won't go to pieces—that's the truth, the absolute truth. There are as many kinds of truths as there are kinds of boots and as many concepts of the boot as a single Alpha accounts for the totality of all numbers. God—if only it could go on like this forever." This being a quotation from Witkacy's absurdist play The Shoemakers, a political parable set in a shoemaker's workshop that morphs into a fantastical office and a prison. Overworked and under-appreciated, the eponymous shoemakers toil through their meaningless, mindless tasks. To avert a revolt, they find themselves imprisoned in a cell for lazybones, their sentence a lifetime of idleness. Their only hope for escape is through the very work they loathed. Later, the shoemakers lead a revolution. Then there's another revolution, this one resulting in the total automation of life. Witkacy's play can be interpreted as a utopian's critique of all forms of power and sociopolitical realities, including not only capitalism but revolution, which only gives way to further bondage.
It's no accident that shoes feature above. Historically, they were considered a luxury good, inherited and worn only on special occasions. They were held onto, repaired, passed down. The deceased were then given bast shoes.
Pawel Marcinek's work echoes Van Gogh's painting of a pair of shabby peasant shoes, which, in turn, inspired a legendary debate between Heidegger, Schapiro, and Derrida, with the latter declaring that nobody cares about shoes themselves - only about who wore them.
Dominika Olszowy - Torte (2024)
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"Something tempts me to tinkle on a torte," Edward Kraśinski once jested, his mischievous verse rhyming in Polish. The artist enjoyed writing these short, impish rhymes on walls, or jotting them down as little notes he would gift to friends. To urinate on a torte is an outrageous, subversive, concise but also somewhat tasteless joke. The torte itself doesn't sound all that substantive either. A torte, or cake or pie, is a metaphor often invoked in the context of the division and distribution of capital, wealth, and resources. Karl Marx is said to have said that while the workers may bake the cake, it is the bourgeoisie who help themselves to the largest slices, leaving mere morsels for everyone else. A variant of this aphorism is that capitalism promises cake, only to scatter crumbs to the proletariat. A related concept in macroeconomics is "growing the pie," which posits economic growth as a means for spreading wealth across society. Critics of the neoliberal theory such as Michael Sandel counter that while the pie may grow larger, the methods of distributing it remain fixed, and that there are, in fact, multiple hidden pies. And Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, writes that inequality grows faster than the pie.
Dominika Olszowy's cake hardly resembles the sort of colourful frosted cake one would order for a special occasion, a wedding or a birthday. It's like somebody took off their pants after spilling milk on them.
Andreea Anghel - Leni Riefenstahl Goes to Africa (and Loves It!) (2023)
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In the 1970s, decades after the Second World War, Leni Riefenstahl - one of the principal propagandists of Nazism, Adolf Hitler's "favourite filmmaker" - went to Africa. There she became a converted racist, of sorts. In Sudan, Riefenstahl filmed and photographed the Nuba people, to whom she attached herself. The resultant body of work hewed dangerously close to the art of the Third Reich, with Riefenstahl foregrounding raw power, an ethos of "primitivism”, and tribalist pride in the same way as when elevating the Germanic superman. Seeming to offer affirmation on the surface, her work comes across as classic transference and a form of cultural colonialism.
Contemporary studies of capitalism increasingly reference the theories of sociologist and economic historian Immanuel Wallerstein, who retraced the advent of capitalism back to the sixteenth century, with the cementing of the colonial world order as well as the beginnings of Eastern European manorialism. In both cases, exploitation and forced labor were central to the accumulation of capital. Racism and dehumanisation were less an ideology than an intentional strategy based on exclusion - one of divide and rule, especially of groups that might otherwise form a unified front and rebel-used by the capitalist system on both sides of the Atlantic.
Andreea Anghel's work, referencing the controversial figure of Riefenstahl, is comprised of found objects: a colonial-style desk and an old sock, which the artist wore in her former studio, located in a building that, during the Second World War, was used for forced labor in connection with the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.
group exhibition
opening: 17.10.2025. 19.00
Curator: Ania Batko
Artists: Andreea Anghel, Przemek Branas, Rafał Bujnowski, Paweł Marcinek, Aleksandra Nenko, Dominika Olszowy, Mikołaj Sobotka
BWA Studio
ul. Ruska 46a/301, 50-079 Wrocław, Poland
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"I approached the painting in order to determine its composition. I put my nose right up to it and but it was impossible to tell if it was made of rubber, bronze, paint, rubies, sunbeams, piss or shit.
[...] It must be shit! I swear."
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Roland Topor in the role of Biche, from an adaptation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Love, 1984
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[More photos, text, etc.]
(GROUP SHOW)
thank you for recording 🔴
17.07.2025 | 18.08.2025
Andreea Anghel, Irina Caia, Piotrek Kowalski and Michał Maliński.
Curated by Andreea Goța
–
Turnus Gallery
ul. Wolska 46/48, Warsaw, Poland
Exhibition view - Piotrek Kowalski - Andreea Anghel
Exhibition view - Michał Maliński - Irina Caia
Irina Caia - … and in absence there is just echo, video, 2025
Andreea Anghel - He Who Danced Like a God. installation, 2022
Piotrek Kowalski - Kontakty, installation, 2024
Andreea Anghel - fountaindrinkers, installation, 2023
Piotrek Kowalski - Timeline, installation, 2024
Michał Maliński - prisoner, ink print, steel frame, 2025
(GROUP SHOW)
thank you for recording 🔴
17.07.2025 | 18.08.2025
You are invited to join us for the opening of our upcoming group exhibition featuring works by Andreea Anghel, Irina Caia, Piotrek Kowalski and Michał Maliński. Looking forward to seeing you!
Curated by Andreea Goța
–
Turnus Gallery
ul. Wolska 46/48, Warsaw, Poland
The exhibition points toward a space where staging gives rise to its own kind of truth, and where persistent questioning becomes the only structure left to hold onto.
𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨
Polite and ironic, you are trying to hide the loss of control inherent in being observed and captured. This process is never neutral; shaped by power and perspective, the act of recording becomes both archive and performance, rendering truth partial and contested.
'thank you for recording' opens up a space where the act of staging creates its own kind of truth. In the absence of solid ground, it is the persistence of questioning and reimagining that holds everything together.
Recording in the context of the exhibition extends beyond video or audio. It is understood as a broader form of documentation: a way to preserve, reconstruct, or make sense of an experience. Shaped by intention, perspective, and context, it becomes both archive and performance. The document becomes unstable, distorted, not a clear trace but a site of friction between remembering and imagining.
Looking at the works together, I felt an almost physical jolt. For some reason, it reminded me of that moment when you touch your pocket and realize your phone is missing. Your entire system halts for a split second, and in that flash, everything sharpens. A vibration in the body, a surge of recognition, and the sudden absence of something that was just there.
This moment, when something is recognized as lost, feels both abrupt and vague, with no clear timeline. The mind shifts into a mode of reconstruction. A rehearsal begins; not to prepare for what is to come, but to respond to what has already happened. Each step retraced carries uncertainty. Gestures are repeated and spaces revisited, as if scenes might be rebuilt from memory. While some fragments remain intact and clear, others begin to distort or dissolve entirely. In this way, the search becomes a creative act, not about factual recovery but about inventing something out of necessity.
Traces emerge as fragile, personal records, attempts to hold onto impressions, and emotional imprints. They are shaped as much by what is preserved as by what inevitably slips away. Here, documentation functions not as proof, but as a form of possibility, an echo of something that once was or might have been.⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Andreea Goța
[More photos, text, etc.]
Contemporary Art Library
Low Ground Pressure
O FLUXO
KUBAPARIS
UntitledDb
SZUM
(GROUP SHOW)
Unleashing the Sins of Sculpture
(Group SHOW)
— A survey exhibition of contemporary Romanian female sculptors—
Curated by Cristina Vasilescu and Georgiana Tidorescu
March 27th — May 8th, 2025
Venue: Scânteia+
Opening: Thursday, 27th March | 6PM
Unleashing the sins of sculpture is a major survey exhibition featuring seventeen contemporary Romanian female sculptors, showcasing works created over the past decade. The exhibition brings together both emerging and established artists, shedding light on multiple perspectives of women in sculpture and installation art. Centered around themes of pleasure and pain, the curatorial framework explores reflections on the female body and identity, their external stimuli, and the performative nature of sculpture. By amplifying these female voices in various constellations, the exhibition offers fresh insights into the evolving landscape of sculpture and the dynamic roles women continue to play within it.
The presented artists are: Apparatus 22, Andreea Anghel, Alexandra Boaru, Alex Bodea, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Lorena Cocioni, Giulia Crețulescu, Arantxa Etcheverria, Andreea Medar, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Ioana Nemeș, Ileana Pașcalău, Pusha Petrov, Adriana Preda, Lea Rasovszky, Ioana Sisea, Larisa Sitar, Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor and Kristin Wenzel.
Exhibition supported by Goethe-Institut Bukarest.
Scânteia+
Piata Presei Libere, No. 1, Bucharest, Romania
Exhibition view
Adriana Preda - Moisturizer on Fake Leather and Cuticle Oil on Gel Nail Extensions - multimedia installation (sculptural objects, ready-made objects, video 12’06’’) - (2025) ✧ Apparatus 22 - A TOTEM TO FRUMIRIA - Installation - metal, led display, red leather, spherical mirrors, plexiglass, forex, paint - (2022)
Exhibition view
Alex Bodea - Boy Fighting Back a Man - Tempera, oil and beeswax on wood - (2023)
Exhibition view
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor - Permanent Depression - installation, variable dimensions. Includes 19th-century Rug, Shekarlu tribe, part of Qashqa’i tribal confederacy, South West PersiaAntonio Beato (c. 1832–1906), Italian-British photographer, Colosses de Memnon, end of the19th century photograph, Brooklyn Museum collection (print reproduction) - (2025) ✧ Ioana Sisea - Mama - oak - (2017)
Larisa Sitar - We Belong Together - concrete, polyurethane foam - (2024)
The Bureau of Melodramatic Research ✧ Larisa Sitar - Resplendent #1 - Sculpture - concrete bas-relief - (2019) ✧ Giulia Crețulescu - Body Contouring - textile, sponge - (2023) ✧ Andreea Anghel - He Who Danced Like A God - Installation - found objects (leather shoe, billiard ball, hunting crop / horse whip with missing lash, 1952 Larousse encyclopaedia opened at page 169 / APU, highlighting ‘L’apres Midi D’un Faune’, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and with the main part danced by himself), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass - (2022) ✧ Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Larisa Sitar - Resplendent #1 - concrete bas-relief - (2019)
Giulia Crețulescu - Body Contouring - textile, sponge - (2023)
Andreea Anghel - He Who Danced Like A God - Installation - found objects (leather shoe, billiard ball, hunting crop / horse whip with missing lash, 1952 Larousse encyclopaedia opened at page 169 / APU, highlighting ‘L’apres Midi D’un Faune’, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and with the main part danced by himself), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass - (2022) ✧ Ioana Nemeș - Monthly Evaluations (2005–2010)
Exhibition view
Andreea Anghel - He Who Danced Like A God - Installation - found objects (leather shoe, billiard ball, hunting crop / horse whip with missing lash, 1952 Larousse encyclopaedia opened at page 169 / APU, highlighting ‘L’apres Midi D’un Faune’, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and with the main part danced by himself), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass - (2022)
Exhibition view
Andreea Medar - Dowry - Installation (2018)
The Bureau of Melodramatic Research - High Heel Communism (2022)
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Alexandra Boaru - For Beginners Only - Installation - stones, artificial hair, metal stands - (2023)
Kristin Wenzel - Untitled - wood, black piano finish, stainless steel - (2009)
Giulia Crețulescu - Weapon no. 2 - Stainless steel piece
Ileana Pașcalău - Kickback II - leather, lipsticks - (2019)
Exhibition view
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
The Bureau of Melodramatic Research - High Heel Communism - (2022)
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Ileana Pașcalău - Pretty consume/d - epoxy resin, plexiglass, worms - (2019)
(GROUP SHOW)
Unleashing the Sins of Sculpture
— A survey exhibition of contemporary Romanian female sculptors—
Curated by Cristina Vasilescu and Georgiana Tidorescu
March 27th — May 8th, 2025
Venue: Scânteia+
Opening: Thursday, 27th March | 6PM
Unleashing the sins of sculpture is a major survey exhibition featuring seventeen contemporary Romanian female sculptors, showcasing works created over the past decade. The exhibition brings together both emerging and established artists, shedding light on multiple perspectives of women in sculpture and installation art. Centered around themes of pleasure and pain, the curatorial framework explores reflections on the female body and identity, their external stimuli, and the performative nature of sculpture. By amplifying these female voices in various constellations, the exhibition offers fresh insights into the evolving landscape of sculpture and the dynamic roles women continue to play within it.
The presented artists are: Apparatus 22, Andreea Anghel, Alexandra Boaru, Alex Bodea, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Lorena Cocioni, Giulia Crețulescu, Arantxa Etcheverria, Andreea Medar, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Ioana Nemeș, Ileana Pașcalău, Pusha Petrov, Adriana Preda, Lea Rasovszky, Ioana Sisea, Larisa Sitar, Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor and Kristin Wenzel.
Exhibition supported by Goethe-Institut Bukarest.
Scânteia+
Piata Presei Libere, No. 1, Bucharest, Romania
[More photos, text, etc.]
Frieze Magazine - review
2023
(DUO SHOW)
UNTITLED (EMOTIONAL ARCHIVE)
Andreea Anghel ・ Radek Szlaga
Miejski Ośrodek Sztuki (MOS)
ul. Pomorska 73, 66-400 Gorzów Wlkp. , Poland
Opening: 13.05.2023, 17:00
Runs until: 25.06.2023
Curator: Romuald Demidenko
Ah, 4chan, such a wonderful cesspool of free speech. If one were to compare online domains to army bases, apart from the inherent networks that sum up both, there is a striking difference: one uses freedom as a shield for deviant behaviour, while one administers freedom as a catchphrase for occupation and coercion. One is chaos embodied, the other prizes discipline. Back in 1939 joining the army was a way of supporting your (synthetic, mediated) beliefs, while today joining the virtual army of trolls is, in some cases, a last resort to alienation. Joining the physical army meant displacement, today being part of a virtual army does not alter one’s presence, if anything it pushes members to signal to the entire world that they are present. Maybe that’s why sports pants don’t have buttons. There’s no time to lose.
Viktor went shivering past a brightly lit ad on that late December evening with a sharply dressed officer sitting at a tidy desk perched in front of a dimly lit window. It was snowing. He bought a Christmas present for Jana, his daughter, with the last of his allowance for the month. They'll have to make-do somehow until after the New Year, he only had pennies left in his pocket and Olga had been badgering him about food (or the lack of it) all winter. Oh well, he sighed.
The sleek, neo-noir imagery he was looking at had a neat text at the bottom announcing the latest corporate merger:
''SB- UBP- Securitate- NKVD- KGB- CDS- ŠtB- SS- Stasi- Gestapo- EK- UDBA
Experience today!
We are here for your own good. Don't resist. Assist.
We make your loved ones a thing of the past! Fast!
Now hiring!!!''
He wondered whether they paid well enough to afford water. If yes, he might just give in and sign up.
The Voight-Kampff test was a test used by the LAPD's Blade Runners to assist in determining whether or not an individual was a replicant. The machine used in the test measured bodily functions such as respiration, heart rate, blushing and pupillary dilation in response to emotionally provocative questions. It typically took twenty to thirty cross-referenced questions to detect a Nexus-6 replicant.[1]
"A very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the menacing air of a sinister insect. The VK is used primarily by Blade Runners to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring the degree of his empathic response through carefully worded questions and statements."
The Voight-Kampff machine is perhaps analogous to (and may have been partly inspired by) Alan Turing's work which propounded an artificial intelligence test — to see if a computer could convince a human (by answering set questions, etc.) that it was another human. The phrase Turing test was popularised by science fiction but was not used until years after Turing's death.
The VK test is also strongly reminiscent of the polygraph - a type of lie detector test that measures physiological responses against a pre-established baseline in order to determine whether or not a lie is being told. The line 'Just warming you up, that's all.' spoken by Holden to Leon in the opening scene suggests that a similar baseline is being established.
Also worthy of note is the 'fruit machine', a device developed for use in the Canadian military that aimed to measure pupillary dilation in response to erotic imagery in order to determine whether the subject was homosexual.
Given the slight, yet noticeable shift in Polish society (as well as other established economies worldwide) in the past few years one encounters very few obstacles in figuring out what can be defined as a possible source of the problem, namely the unequal flow of capital and what kind of consequences this has in the long term, the most obvious one being nazism with a spray tan that’s just the right shade for social media.
While most turn to activism and grassroots methods so as to counter these symptoms, we propose a simple choreography of dissent, to be performed in a public setting by whomever should circumstances require, as a way of honouring the late socialist playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht’s words as well as embodying a performative piece without inherent market value.
To quote Brecht:
‘’Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament only the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are people who want to eat the veal without slaughtering the calf.’’
From Wikipedia:
The book's title comes from a quote delivered by the character Morpheus in the 1999 film The Matrix: "Welcome to the desert of the real". Both Žižek's title and the line from The Matrix refer to a phrase in Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Part of this phrase appears in the following context of the book:
‘If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly [...] this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacrum [...] It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.’
Early in The Matrix, Neo used a hollowed-out book with the title Simulacra and Simulation to hide an illegal data disc which appeared in an early scene of the film. Later in the film, Morpheus utters these words after the main character Neo wakes up from his computer-generated virtual reality, experiencing the Real as a desolate, war-torn, yet spectacular geography. For Žižek, this represents a prime example of the 20th century's "passion for the Real," for which the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were the ultimate artistic expression. His argument is that because this passion was sublimated into the postmodern "passion for the semblance," Americans experienced the "return of the Real" in exactly the same way as Neo did in the film, i.e., as a nightmarish virtual landscape or "reality as the ultimate 'effect.'"
Herron came home with a wide smile on his face. He closed the door to the underground dwelling he’d been squatting for the past 10 years without having come across a single other being, human or not. He turned on the radio station and adjusted the frequency dial so as to catch some transmissions.
‘…..sell off oil. I repeat, do not sell off oil. Current stocks are insufficient….’
‘Ugh, not this again’ he thought.
How on Earth was that message still around? It’d been decades since oil wells ran dry and no sooner had the news started spreading that most people decided to switch off all means of communication and go offline.
‘They must’ve forgotten to flip the switch on that one.’
After a while he grew tired of searching as the cold was slowly getting to him. He got up, went for his fur coat, and from a lined inner pocket took out a dusty cloth. Inside was an object he hadn’t come across in recent months, and these were always a treat to find. He gently unfurled the cloth, so old it was disintegrating in his hands. In it was a book with a drawing of a most peculiar animal. What were these called? - he struggled to remember…
…’A seal!’
Indeed, he’d forgotten all about what animals were. He gingerly opened the book, which was surprisingly intact. A strange writing, sharp but decorative, shaped like axes and swords, in bold lettering, lay inside in an unknown language.
‘𝔇𝔞𝔰 ℜ𝔢𝔦𝔠𝔥 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔗𝔦𝔢𝔯𝔢’ stood written at the beginning. And, after a few pages, a year, which someone attempted to erase but had done so imperfectly.
𝔅𝔢𝔯𝔩𝔦𝔫, 1937.
‘Huh.’
Unfazed, he tore the first page. From his coat he produced a box of matches. He crumpled the piece of paper, with its fancy lettering, on the floor and lit the match within his cupped hands, careful as to not let the minuscule flame die out. He lit the first page. His eyes lit up with it.
He then proceeded to carefully inspect each page, with its peculiar text and images of creatures he’d only heard of from his grandmother. After looking at each page he would rip it off and throw it in the small fire that was bouncing gleefully. His smile widened with each page being torn.
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
post-truth
adjective
1. relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."can we find reliable information in these post-truth times?"
“Oh, come now, Nikita, you can’t keep on rummaging things like that.’
‘But you’ve read it with your own eyes, there don’t have enough of it to support the population!’
‘Bollocks! The Ministry never declared anything of the sort. You’re blowing things out of proportion. We’re on track to fulfil the plan for this year, that’s all there is to it.’
‘Yes, but where do you think they’ll find enough material to meet these quotas?’
‘Never-you-mind…come to think of it, I’d watch it if I were you.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You heard me well the first time. Good day!’
As Boris was going down the stairs Nikita’s eyes drifted to the side to one of the statues behind the columns, a huntress with a dog by her side. Such a perfect, serene face to it, too. He stood at the top of the stairs looking at it, as if in a daze. He knew there was no way that those quotas would be met. He had heard from his neighbour the week before that his son had received a summons. How could he receive a summons when he was just 19 years old? Similar stories could be heard throughout the neighbourhood, it would be only a matter of time until people would start putting two and two together. And then… ‘no, it can’t be…’ he told himself with disbelief. As he began descending the stairs, one step quicker than the last until he was practically running and tripping over the last ones, he momentarily threw a furtive glance back at it and could swear that one of its eyes had a small, barely visible, illuminated red dot.
Imagine for a moment that someone was to lock the doors where you are right now. Assuming you had no emergency bottles of water, it would take you roughly seven days to die from dehydration. If you were lost in the desert with no water at all, it would take a day and a half.
When the body is forced into extreme situations like heat, cold, or water deprivation, it makes a tactical decision to withdraw resources from the least essential parts first. With dehydration, this initially happens in the kidneys. Our kidneys will reabsorb water that would have been used in urine, so this is why your urine gets darker when you are dehydrated — the urea concentration increases.
When this is still not enough, the body will draw water from your cells and organs to retain the necessary blood pressure to keep you ticking. Your eyes will contract to expose the conjunctiva, your lips will shrivel away entirely, your teeth and gums will project outward like on a skeleton, your skin blackens and dries out, and your tongue becomes a tiny piece of beef jerky. If you are cut, you are too dry to even bleed.
Only after days of this slow torture will you die. With less and less water, the blood in your body will thicken, and your blood pressure will drop drastically. This means that all of the oxygen and nutrients in your blood will take a lot longer to get to your organs, and so they become deprived. Your brain, heart, kidneys, and liver begin to fail. Ultimately, your brain will start to shrink from osmosis in an attempt to hydrate the body (the brain has a lot of water), which eventually will cause you to die.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Excerpt from ‘A gruesome death: the macabre science of dehydration’ (Jonny Thomson, published on Big Think on August 13th, 2021.
Thought a lot about Leni,
while toiling away in the studio in the former canteen at Pafawag,
where prisoners from Gross-Rosen would offer sustenance
to their ailing bodies,
Thought a lot about Leni,
directing her gaze at ebony skin that would have otherwise been cremated if there were a given chance,
Thought a lot about Leni,
rummaging through books describing the beauty of far away lands,
yet forever within our control,
Thought a lot about you, Leni,
how you used those ailing bodies for your art and then played the fool when their pain boiled over and surfaced for the whole world to see,
Thought a lot about you, Leni,
about how you’ve erased your history
and thought you’d get away with it,
and yet, here we are.
Found objects (antique 'Milicja' Polish secret police gloves and baton), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
132 x 180 x 12 cm
2023
Found objects (antique shower head, antique baroque bookcase elements), oil-based enamel paint, UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
100 x 45 x 73 cm
2023
Found objects (antique 'Milicja' Polish secret police gun holster, press conference microphone), latex paint, UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
134 x 180 x 8 cm
2023
Found objects (antique horse riding equipment, antique juggling equipment from a defunct circus), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
125 x 180 x 16 cm
2023
Andreea Anghel - Fountaindrinkers
Found objects (antique fibreglass educational geographical maquette, antique domino tiles), epoxy resin, pigment, plasticine.
117 x 45 x 20 cm
2023
Found objects (antique juggling equipment from a defunct circus), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
125 x 180 x 16 cm
2023
Radek Szlaga - Places I Had No Intention of Seeing series - dimensions variable, mixed media, oil on linen - 2017—2023
Radek Szlaga - Untitled -oil on linen - 160 x 120 cm - 2023
Andreea Anghel - Leni Riefenstahl Goes To Africa (and loves it!)
Found objects (antique colonialist writing desk, sock worn in the artist's former studio located in a Linke-Hofmann-Werke AG (now called Pafawag) building where during WW2 prisoners from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp were used as forced labour), epoxy resin, pigment, UV print on vinyl, prairie grass, googly eyes.
180 x 86 x 55 cm
2023
Found object (antique callipers), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium.
62 x 100 x 3 cm
2023
Found object (antique wooden hat mould), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium.
66 x 100 x 3 cm
2023
Found objects (modernist stool, antique brass elephant sculpture, antique penguin wooden figurine, antique bonnet, antique juggling equipment and billiard ball)
Dimensions variable
2023
Found objects (antique baroque bedpost element, antique educational anatomical eye model and billiard ball), foam, laminated wood, epoxy resin.
33 x 72 x 32 cm
2023
Andreea Anghel - Hi Mom!
Video performance filmed in the artist's former studio located in a Linke-Hofmann-Werke AG (now called Pafawag) building where during WW2 prisoners from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp were used as forced labour.
2 min 27 sec, looped.
2018
Found objects (antique ceramic wall hooks) UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
170 x 100 x 16 cm
2023
Video performance, 4 min 37 sec, looped.
2018
(DUO SHOW)
UNTITLED (EMOTIONAL ARCHIVE)
Andreea Anghel ・ Radek Szlaga
Miejski Ośrodek Sztuki (MOS)
ul. Pomorska 73, 66-400 Gorzów Wlkp. , Poland
Opening: 13.05.2023, 17:00
Runs until: 25.06.2023
Curator: Romuald Demidenko
The mall had not been frequented for a long time. There were no more crowds of onlookers admiring the shop windows. The cinema, which had been the last hope of the place, was eventually closed. Two artists decided to visit the abandoned building. And they wished to create new works and breathe life into the empty space. The site-specific installation they designed was placed in the atrium in order to reference the classics of environmental art. They believed that their collaborative work would inspire. Shortly before the opening, it turned out that the president had taken the decision to demolish the building. An art gallery was to be built in its place.
The artists did not lose faith that their work and that the story of the mall could be told in another place. They planned to reconstruct the installation. The juxtaposition of their works created a spatial and symbolic form in which each element was rooted in individual experience, and was also an attempt to reinterpret recent history. The installation consisted of multi-part assemblages that were reminiscent of advertising vitrines, using printmaking, found objects and semi-liquid materials. They were surrounded by paintings in which text and narratives about migration or language would appear next to each other (...).
A semi-fictional story as the one written above could be an introduction to the exhibition UNTITLED (EMOTIONAL ARCHIVE). Andreea Anghel (b. 1990) and Radek Szlaga (b. 1979) present at MOS their joint installation consisting primarily of their most recent works.
[More photos, text, etc.]
KUBAPARIS
Daily Lazy
Living Content
(GROUP SHOW)
affair | meltdown
After the Bucharest edition, we are thrilled to invite you to
AFFAIR Warsaw | meltdown
a collaborative exhibition Piktogram x Suprainfinit
Andreea Anghel, Apparatus 22, Larisa Sitar, Piotr Skiba
Piktogram Gallery, Warsaw
26.05 - 1.07.2023
APPARATUS 22 - Banner 11:11 - leather, rubber, 137 x 155 cm - 2022
Piotr Skiba - Stocking Corner Lamp - steel, USB Type C Powered LED, snake slough, 144 x 43 x 43 cm - 2023
Andreea Anghel - Catherine-The-Not-So-Great - Found objects (antique agrarian tool, wig), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass - 134 x 180 x 20 cm - 2023
APPARATUS 22 - Trinity – Triangle – Threesome - installation (transformed vintage black leather jackets, oil paint, acrylic paint, three vintage tripods) | silhouette 1: 174 x 80 cm, silhouette 2: 160 x 90 cm, silhouette 3: 190 x 130 cm - 2020
Larisa Sitar - Flush (in brown) - textile, OSB, 515 x 100 x 80 cm - 2023
Piotr Skiba - Untitled (Melted Traffic Lights) - plastic, steel, cables, dimensions variable, c. 130 x 40 x 50 cm - 2021
Andreea Anghel - Hothouse - UV print on vinyl, wax, plexiglass, marker, tag stick, books, oxidised metal, wood - 180 x 130 x 25 cm - 2019
Piotr Skiba - display with small bronze sculptures - 2023
After the Bucharest edition, we are thrilled to invite you to
AFFAIR Warsaw | meltdown
a collaborative exhibition Piktogram x Suprainfinit
Andreea Anghel, Apparatus 22, Larisa Sitar, Piotr Skiba
Piktogram Gallery, Warsaw
26.05 - 1.07.2023
Touching the objects of the immediate reality, the skins are succumbing to tactile pleasures. The porosity of (my) skin liquifies the exchanges with any form, shape, and content. Dark matter, dark spaces, dark leather sink inside their objectivity while creating voice for other potentialities to emerge.
AFFAIR Warsaw melts together dark undertones of human psyche, of objecthood, realities and surfaces. Yet “dark” here is turned into a path to fiction and release of pressure, to queer sensibilities, to subconscious joy to be explored in territories of uncertainty. Like jumping with your eyes closed inside a crystal clear water, entering this exhibition plunges you in common and unfamiliar realms, into a meshing atmosphere of comfort, discomfort and tension, into tacit dialogues and subliminal gestures of opacity. The bodies of some artworks expand to a posthuman and prosthetic understanding, yet pertaining to a nostalgia for well-known materialities and functionalities.
In relation to the instrumentalization of everyday imagery in the contemporary environment, the exhibition tackles the reinterpretation of objects, images, and gestures in a twisted take. Partly refusing to generate visual representations anew, most of the works unfold as assemblages made of found, desolate objects, all bound in a process of creating new speculative circuits.
[More photos, text, etc.]
Artviewer
2022
(SOLO SHOW)
The Well-Upholstered Nightmare
8 Jul 2022 – 1 Oct 2022
Zina Gallery
Axente Sever 14A, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Curator: Flaviu Rogojan
xX1990LoneRangerXx was late for a meeting with one of his his workmates from the office when it hit him again. Only this time it wasn’t the usual panic, body shaking violently, sweaty palms and all that crap, oh no… this time it was something peculiar.
He suddenly felt as if he was not part of this world anymore. As he was aiming for the subway, drifting by others as if he were a ghost, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he wasn’t a person anymore, but some sort of primitive organism whose only purpose was to make the big boys in grey suits happy. The more unhappy he was, the more pleased they were.
As he was descending towards the station he noticed that it had been remodelled into a marshland (no doubt a sign of gentrification, his sister had been babbling about these sorts of things for the past year, driving him mad), cold concrete steps gradually giving way to fecund earthy smells, green sludge and insects buzzing about their business. ‘Ugh’, he said to himself, he fucking hated bugs. The floor was now a slowly-moving non-descript liquid brown mix, and as soon as he inserted his foot into it he realised it’s goal was to suck as much of his body as possible under the surface. He stubbornly trudged through for a good ten metres until he realised there was no chance he’d make it all the way to the train, if there even was one running at all. He was in fact pathetically stuck. One guy made it a bit further than he’d had, at the expense of having his balding forehead and crooked nose barely sticking out from the brown muck, struggling to breathe. Poor bastard. At least he was only in it up to his waist.
They were nice enough to leave the advertisements on the walls though. I suppose that’s how you get people to look at them these days, trick them into what amounts to a slow, boring death. He didn’t mind dying, he would often think about it, especially while having his morning coffee, but then he’d remember about his dog and postpone it time and again.
As he was perusing the sleek vitrines one ad in particular caught his eye, featuring a glorious alphamale with golden locks paddling down a wild river in an inflatable raft.
A bloody raft. Why didn’t he think of buying one of those in the first place?
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦
Pam, wake the fuck up! We need to go get some burgers, I need to be at work by 5!!!!
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦
First responders at the scene managed to save the life of just one woman, brunette, who is currently in hospital with serious injuries. Her name has not yet been released to the public due to a concern for privacy. The remaining victims have now been publicly named: Miranda Blake, 21, redhead, Summer Sanders, 23, brunette, Selma Walters, 27, blonde, and Courtney Moss, 24, strawberry blonde, were having a girls night out at the local diner when they were accosted while leaving the establishment by the assumed perpetrator, M.H., a 27-year-old white male, who proceeded to shoot each one at point blank range with an automatic rifle. It has become apparent to prosecutors that one of the victims had gone to the same highschool as the alleged attacker. Chat messages sent by M.H. to the victim via Facebook suggest a romantic infatuation on the part of the male suspect towards the unsuspecting female who then proceeded to reject his advances for a mating partner positioned higher on the food chain, thus offering the species a better chance at evolutionary advancement.
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦
His heart was now racing….Jesus, he could have sworn that chair moved.
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦
How does one subdue the settled ones’ rage? By cutting the cotton picker’s black hand when they fail to keep up, by starting with a finger when one steals in the desert. "To the priests, the soldiers, the judges, to those people who educate, instruct and govern men, I dedicate these pages of Murder and Blood." — Octave Mirbeau’s dedication of 'Le Jardin des Supplices'. ….although I personally find Kafka’s ‘In The Penal Colony’ to be just as endearing.
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦
From Wikipedia**:
On Sunday, 19 January 1919, Vaslav Nijinsky made one last public appearance; a solo improvised performance at the Suvretta House in St Moritz. The crowd consisted of skiers, hotel guests, wealthy visitors from abroad, war refugees, assorted social climbers. Bertha Asseo, a family friend, played the piano. Vaslav stood still for a good while before he finally started moving. His dance reflected a wide range of feelings from sadness, anger to joyfulness. His strong feelings towards the devastation of the war, and people who did nothing to stop it, were also reflected in his dance. [56]
…
Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks in 1919 he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum to Zurich. It reflected the decline of his household into chaos.[61] He elevated feeling and action in his writing. It combined elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate. Discovering the three notebooks of the diary years later, plus another with letters to a variety of people, his wife published a bowdlerized version of the diary in 1936, translated into English by Jennifer Mattingly.[1] She deleted about 40 per cent of the diary, especially references to bodily functions, sex, and homosexuality, recasting Nijinsky as an "involuntary homosexual." She also removed some of his more unflattering references to her and others close to their household. She moved sections around, obscuring the "march of events" obvious in the original version and toning down some of the odder portions, including trying to distinguish between sections in which he writes as God and others as himself (in the original all such sections are written the same.)[1]
From The New York Review***:
To my knowledge, it is the only sustained, on-the-spot (not retrospective) written account, by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis. Other important artists have gone mad—Hölderlin, Schumann, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud—but none of them left us a record like this.
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Notes:
* The title of the show, 'The Well-Upholstered Nightmare', comes from a written review by Will Harrison published on The Baffler website on November 1st 2021.
** Wikipedia page on Vaslav Nijinsky
*** Joan Acocella, Secrets of Nijinsky - The New York Review, January 14th, 1999
Saint Incel of 4chan
Found objects (blonde hair, webbing), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
180 x 132 x 18 cm
2022
Simone’s Chair
Found objects (antique chair, antique urine bottle), epoxy resin, pigment, paint, clay.
80 x 45 x 45 cm
2022
The Rat Race (Glory Holes)
Found objects (brass spikes, boxing glove, billiard ball), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
180 x 127 x 35 cm
2022
The Century Of The Self
Found objects (horse toy, Geoffrey Harcourt for Hans Kaufeld Airport 037 chair, billiard balls).
55 x 60 x 70 cm
2022
Unit of Carelessness
Found objects (1920s chromed steel frame from a Hynek Gottwald Bauhaus daybed, tension arches from Mart Stam S34 chairs, steel spring, foam, nylon rope), bandages.
87 x 65 x 16 cm
2022
Skeeter Davis - The End Of The World
Found objects (Mercedes upholstered car door handles), chemical transfer print, UV print on vinyl, wood.
180 x 125 x 13 cm
2022
UV prints on vinyl, water-based temporary tattoos, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
180 x 134 x 10 cm
2022
A Short History Of Alarms
Found objects (billiard ball, shoe brush, sponge, burl wood), aluminium food trays and shelf, epoxy resin, wax.
33 x 84 x 15 cm
2021-2022
He Who Danced Like A God
Found objects (leather shoe, billiard ball, hunting crop / horse whip with missing lash, 1952 Larousse encyclopaedia opened at page 169 / APU, highlighting ‘L’apres Midi D’un Faune’, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and with the main part danced by himself), UV print on vinyl, fibreboard, wood, aluminium, plexiglass.
180 x 132 x 18 cm
2022
Requiem for All That We Hold Dear
Found object (tubular chromed steel heater), dried Euphorbia characias ‘Tasmanian Tiger’ (killed off during an unusually-cold winter), wax candles.
93 x 90 x 15 cm
2022
8 Jul 2022 – 1 Oct 2022
Zina Gallery
Axente Sever 14A, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Curator: Flaviu Rogojan
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦
Andreea Anghel’s first solo show with the gallery presents a new series of large-scale wall works and objects.
With the world caught up in loops of constant crisis, oscillating between moments of political forward-thinking and authoritarian regressions, more and more people are faced with the suffocating feeling of being stuck in a history that has ceased to unfold.
As time goes on, the sleek, sublimated aesthetic of public and private space only manages to hide the underlying uneasy realities of contradictions and conflict. Under stress, the lurking underworld bubbles up to the surface only to be quickly wiped out of view.
Her accompanying text reads like switching between TV channels: catching glimpses of what looks like fiction, news reports or documentaries. The sudden text interruptions do not break up the meaning. However fragmentary at first sight, it is precisely these splits that create the cracks that hold everything together.
Working with close crops of found images and parts of objects, Andreea Anghel’s works combine fragmented histories and aesthetics into oversized vitrines. Vinyl banner prints encased in aluminium and plexiglass resemble uncanny subway advertisements or curiosity cabinets. The large-scale assemblages cause rifts to open, allowing society’s neat sewing to rip slightly, just enough to offer a peek into the uncomfortable layers underneath.⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Text by Flaviu Rogojan
[More photos, text, etc.]
KUBAPARIS
O Fluxo
easttopics
blok
2019
(SOLO SHOW)
Know Every Way Out of Your House
Curators: Barbara Żłobińska, Mariusz Maślanka
15.03.2019
Cave Gallery, Wroclaw, Poland
"High power, low self-esteem?
Let’s have one last postmodern party for our dying homeworld, shall we?
Coleen Becker, art historian, described Aby Warburg’s work on the Mnemosyne Atlas (October 1929) as describing how fundamental images belonging to the Antiquity travel through time, or that of myths, resuscitated in recent times, signalling these elements as the manifestation of a collective psychic discomfort.
In simpler terms, according to Warburg, an older cultural form’s return usually signals a present psychological dysfunction, one that disrupts the individual as well as the collective mind. Becker furthers this idea by observing that ‘ since these images are encryption’s of ‘’eternal truths’’, they function as contemporary vehicles whose function is to establish control over the irrational, even if the inherent belief in their premonitory power in itself lacks logic. (1)
And yet, we piss on those statues because we drink too much.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
(1) With thanks to Mircea Nicolae for virtually articulating a subconscious thought into words in one of his writings.
(2) The show's title comes from ''Know every way / out of your house" - Diane Di Prima, Revolutionary Letter #25
Hothouse
2019, UV print on vinyl, wax, plexiglass, marker, tag stick, books, oxidized metal, wood, 180 x 130 cm.
I really miss Adorno
2019, Chromed steel, zip ties, wire, wax candles, chain, wire mesh, UV print on vinyl, oxidized metal, 300 x 120 x 100 cm.
Google Brain
2019, UV print on vinyl, oxidised metal, wood, bolts, 128 x 180 cm.
Unit of Displeasure
2018-2019, Chromed steel, wood, foam, 76 x 90 x 15 cm.
(SOLO SHOW)
Know Every Way Out of Your House
Curators: Barbara Żłobińska, Mariusz Maślanka
15.03.2019
Cave Gallery, Wroclaw, Poland
㊋
"High power, low self-esteem?
Let’s have one last postmodern party for our dying homeworld, shall we?
Coleen Becker, art historian, described Aby Warburg’s work on the Mnemosyne Atlas (October 1929) as describing how fundamental images belonging to the Antiquity travel through time, or that of myths, resuscitated in recent times, signalling these elements as the manifestation of a collective psychic discomfort.
In simpler terms, according to Warburg, an older cultural form’s return usually signals a present psychological dysfunction, one that disrupts the individual as well as the collective mind. Becker furthers this idea by observing that ‘ since these images are encryption’s of ‘’eternal truths’’, they function as contemporary vehicles whose function is to establish control over the irrational, even if the inherent belief in their premonitory power in itself lacks logic. (1)
And yet, we piss on those statues because we drink too much.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
(1) With thanks to Mircea Nicolae for virtually articulating a subconscious thought into words in one of his writings.
(2) The show's title comes from ''Know every way / out of your house" - Diane Di Prima, Revolutionary Letter #25
[More photos, text, etc.]