Client: Wroclaw Contemporary Museum

Overview

Glass, i.e. static matter with specific physical features, is but a starting point for Beata Stankiewicz-Szczerbik’s ephemeral works. The artist redefines glass by boldly including it in performance-like narratives, installations or video works. As a result of these operations, glass loses its physicality and becomes an indefinable, unsettling phenomenon. The artist uses glass to create elaborate self-portraits, talk about motherhood, identity, femininity and evanescence. She unveils her glass heart, whose rhythm is controlled by the viewer.

Goals

2019. Coal smoke has been replaced by millions of combustion devices to transport us. Colours attack screaming from everywhere so that the silent, silvery gray of old photos gains the power of great art. Overworked people toil to buy anything mindlessly or to fly anywhere without passion. They drink their sadness with anything. Lots of parties, lots of leaders. They all lie a bit - a little here, a little there. It's just a question of interpretation or viewpoint taken out of context. You have access to any information, half of which is fake. There are no forbidden places; there are legal regulations instead. You are 50. Your world is the same question which you have / do not have* to answer.

Process

The human mind used to rebel against anything that disturbed its equilibrium and orderliness. Meanwhile, according to quantum mechanics, various objects in the micro-world (e.g. electrons) can simultaneously be in two (or more) states. To be more precise, their state is described by a wave function that combines certain base states. This unsettlingly paradoxical depiction of reality is called ‘superposition’.

Additional Information

I dedicate this exhibition to women who are colours against the background of gray and women who are gray against the background of colours. And to those who have not yet decided whether they are women and what colour they are.