We usually begin our texts by asking about a keyword, and I will do the same now. What are bones? The bones of the dead, a game of dice (gra w kości), a bone in the throat (kością w gardle). Bone (kość), fishbone (ość), remains (pozostałość). Nothing, yet it rankles; it does not let one forget. This exhibition comprises paintings and objects by Mikołaj Małek, objects and sculptures by Oskar Dawicki, and the "spoken/walked" text of Stanisław Lem’s The Mask by Maciej Pesta. The text begins, gets bogged down, trudges, circles back; it cannot come to an end. Though the paintings and objects are motionless, they seem to be bound and moved by the spoken/walked text.
Death, though it always seems to be a point, a cut, and an end, refuses to let go and possesses the living. One cannot shake off death once it has appeared even once. It is both alive and not alive at the same time. It is and is not simultaneously.
In several of Mikołaj Małek’s paintings, a hand holds a test tube—but the hand is severed, and a watch is stuck inside the tube. It stands, it hangs. The severed hand holds. Time stands still. An accumulation of paradoxes. A confusion that death introduces into order. Faces wear other faces upon them. A body lies there, being quartered.
Oskar Dawicki’s object Kratka ("Grate") once hung at o/b/c/y during a hollow non-exhibition titled Negative Show. Back then, as a boundary marker, it signaled the "nothingness" that was inside, or rather emphasized the presence/imprisonment of the viewers, as the actual exhibition was located outside the room's limits. The grate and a doll (the author's alter ego) sat on the windowsill outside the room. Now, Kratka—acting as one of the paintings—pierces the flat surface and disrupts the linear narrative. Piszczałka ("Pipe") is an object constructed from an animal bone and drilled with gold screws. The instrument lies in a case—a negative of its shape. It does not play; it waits; it remains. The pulsating Kratka is a kinetic sculpture that, now suspended among paintings, becomes a painting itself, or a negative of one—a teleport to what lies deeper or what is "over there." It reaches under the lining; it turns things inside out.
We wish to think that death is not the end, and this desire seems to be an immanent human trait. Humans tell stories to forge death into something else. Humans dig up bones to feel continuity, to forge "nothing" into something, to find a reason. The exhibition Bones is like a collection of small altars and a museum of curiosities—an accumulation of souvenirs, imprints, fragments, and remains.
In two of Mikołaj Małek's paintings, hands are sculpting a head, bringing it forth from clay. We see that the head is that of a Black person, although the paint colors do not necessarily indicate this. Can the act of bringing forth, or preserving, simultaneously be an act of violence? Hands create but also impose order. The colonial order is, after all, an order of violence.
Lem’s text in the act of walking/speaking: Maciej Pesta recites a fragment of The Mask. It is a text about a gender-unidentified person in the process of becoming or failing to recognize themselves. The text intentionally uses archaic language. It refers to creation myths. It is mythical, dreamlike, yet futuristic. As if a cyber-person had suddenly landed in the order of the eighteenth century. It is a text of struggle. The character is becoming and is being "become." They see themselves and are being watched. Subordinated to a fatal course of events, yet full of feeling and sensually tender.
In the room where the exhibition takes place, one of the doors has been covered with gray paper with an irregular hole cut into it. Through the hole, we see an apartment. o/b/c/y is a place carved out from the space of a home, a place for a different time. The rooms meet but do not mix. Different times and different orders. The same piece of furniture moved from the home space ceases to be a chair or a table. The thing and what is "behind the thing."
