JAKUB CZYSZCZOŃ AND GRUPA BUDAPESZT
The Surface Is Enough
2023 05 19 – 07 01
Opening 19 May, 7pm
“Swallow” is delighted to invite its visitors to the opening of The Surface Is Enough – an exhibition by Jakub Czyszczoń and Grupa Budapeszt. The opening will take place on 7pm Friday, 19th May.
Looking at something” is an expression that suggests that the sight slides on the surface – it cannot go beyond it. Even the figurative art works stop the eyes that would like to see through. This is a paradox that disconnects language from the everyday experience. Yet even a casual meeting with any painting confirms the existence of this confusing sensation of looking at and through at the same time. Hence revealing and concealing only seem to be contradictory practices. There are deeper structures that can be disclosed by constant expansion of surfaces. Genetics convinces us that we can reconstruct an organism based on a small fraction of information. AI can form models of faces and voices with the use of a few shots and uttered words. Is not the act of filling the missing words in the parchments of Sappho similar in nature? But is it an exposure of concealed words? Or the exact opposite – concealment of unavailable poem? And finally, whose poem is this? Sappho’s? Armand D’Angour who reconstructed it? Or does it belong to the generative power of the visible words? Or maybe we will be even able to imagine the relation between two spaces: the one where the poem first came into being and the one where it is being performed? Of course, the latter hypothesis is paradoxical…
The constellation of works by Grupa Budapeszt and Jakub Czyszczoń will fail to answer all these questions. It is not the aim. It is rather a creation of instruments that will amplify these antinomies.
Jakub Czyszczoń is a painter, graduate of the Faculty of Visual Communication Graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, currently a lecturer at the Academy of Art in Szczecin. He was a resident of 18th Street Arts Centre (Santa Monica, CA, 2012-2013), a fellow of the Visegrad Fund Programme (2013) and the Young Poland Programme (2019). He collaborates with the Stereo (Warsaw) and Ermes-Ermes (Rome) galleries.
Grupa Budapeszt is composed of artists and curators (Igor Krenz, Michał Libera & Daniel Muzyczuk). Their practice is usually based around nonorthodox and pataphysical solutions and methods of working with found cultural artefacts. The group deals with art and life, exploring marginal issues arising from technical reproduction, limitations of reasoning with abstractions and drawing radical consequences from the dematerialisation of reality. A combination of scientific methodologies and unbridled intuitions leads to ‘exploding’ explanations. The resulting meta mechanism becomes the basis for the subsequent one, which seeks to interpret its elements by making them narratively coherent.
Exhibition is funded by Lithuanian Council for Culture.