MATCA artspace presents the exhibition MARYNA.TV was here signed by the artist Maryna Tomaszewska.
“(..) A genre of art which uses symbolism to show the transience of life, the futility of pleasure and the certainty of death”* – the term vanitas – coming from the Bible’s Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes – is an umbrella for various meanings from nothingness to radical self-esteem. In the space between death and celebration lie our lives, yet for most, the nature of the upcoming is deeply unsettling.
The affirmation of temporality (with its hedonistic economic goals) clashed with the grim reality of death can be found in Maryna Tomaszewska’s newest objects. Inspired by the inherent irony that can be found at the intersection of the above, the artist engages in experimentation with various symbols of hedonism, leisure, pleasure, death and passing. Within the MATCA show, her approach to discussing temporality remains detached from personal narratives, though her previous explorations of this theme were part of dealing with loss. Her 2023 show Blue Ocean Theory** was a manifest of an intimate, raw experience of grief. Now these more personal, intuitive motivations are simultaneously juxtaposed with notions that she was fueled by earlier: post-internet, humor, anti-aesthetics, mainstream media, feminism and pop-culture.
Maryna.TV is an on-going project that manufactures various consumer objects and produces materials inspired by the influencing culture, this time correlating them with the topic of death. While the imagery of Vanitas is usually depicting various luxury items or organic soon-to-be-perished matter, Maryna comes with a line of products that outline abundance in today’s mainstream, using quotidian objects. The works presented are playful, but come with a twist: the experience of the exhibition could be translated into flipping a coin with an outcome of either life or death.
Using text and objects that draw a parallel between the handcrafted character of baroque art, versus produced items that are representative for fast fashion, the artist indirectly questions the life of an object in itself. On a deeper level, the works deal with existential doubts, and what we make of them, once realizing we will all vanish. (Excerpt from the curatorial text)
**https://marynatomaszewska.com/en/blue-ocean-theory/
The exhibition can be visited until April 10, 2024.
Maryna Tomaszewska is an Interdisciplinary artist and scholar. She is the author of art books, installations, video works, and performances. Her main areas of interest and research are publications on artistic practice, death, feminism, and mechanisms of power. Her artists’ books and magazines are in the collections of (among others) MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate, and the V&A Museum. She is the editor-in-chief of The Worst Magazine Ever. She runs the Experimental Text Studio at the Faculty of Media Art at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.
The exhibition part of Faster Than Your Local Delivery Service project, a cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
