Staffage in Landscape Year: 2015 Solo Exhibition. Promocyjna Gallery, Warsaw, May 2015.

I want to confront the viewer with an unknown space, where the borders of cognition and knowing are placed only by the observer. “Staffage in Landscape” represents a link to the natural environment – an atmosphere of apparent calm and tranquility. Residing in Nature, we are able to capture repetitive designs and schemes. Observations of similarities and structures in various processes allow us to form scientific laws, which we describe as text, numbers and images. In this context, I present the viewer with a fake landscape, frozen in a state of waiting for a narrator who can discover and describe it. The closed gallery space unifies the installations, photographs and images, which interplay with the viewer’s interpretations.

In the context of our common experiences and communal knowledge, “Staffage in Landscape” considers the relationship between man and his environment. Nature is the cradle of humankind, but it is also a potential source of disaster. Floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, natural epidemics and meteorites are just some of the possible daily threats. The vastness of our ecosphere and the insignificance of man often make us think that nature (of which we are a part, but from which we separate ourselves) has become our enemy. We attempt to gain control over our natural environment and its destructive powers, which terrify us. Our failures lead to fear and instability. Our successes – to forgetfulness.

Human settlements often tame their natural environment, or remove it entirely from their presence, ridding their memory of nature’s strength and their fear of it. We are the only phenomenon in the known universe that tries to fight against the abstract vastness and precision of interconnected, natural processes. Are our actions not the result of confusion? What is the longing that makes us surround ourselves with objects and images that remind us of the indissoluble connection between man and the universe? The same universe from which we continuously and paradoxically dissociate ourselves.