In the presented work, I show through images and objects – the time of peace and the time of war.
I imagine times of peace as images that depict abstract tennis courts. Terms such as slice, lob, accompanying the sport of tennis. Grass courts, clay courts, hard courts, soft courts. These are concepts abstracted in wartime, in peacetime they are not – they are completely natural, friendly-sounding.
In peacetime…
Image titles:
Scoreboard – Wimbledon, Slice, Roland Garros, food scraps, flour sifter, perhaps covered with a flag. The images of this part evoke happy moments, when “the morning coffee smells so good when brewed.” In peacetime.
I titled the images of wartime:
Minefields, Ground after tank passage, Tanks from bird’s eye view in winter, it could be tree blossoms after all. Ground around Novi Azov, Detonation, Projectile, Spare parts, The ground after the tanks has run over it.
The images represent my imagination of war.
The illusion that is time, wartime, peacetime. All of this is currently registered instantly.
Hence I built objects that resemble cameras, which I call physiological cameras. Images skinned alive, whether from war, battlefield, or tennis court match, immediately land in our world of abstraction. Through the displayed objects, I want to convey our capacity for the world that is implicated to us through images and words.
On one hand, we experience or don’t, the war in Ukraine, the tragedy of Gaza. Cruelty, powerlessness in striving for peace. Unnamed, nameless faces, bearded Ukrainian soldiers in trenches, starving children of Gaza, death, violence.
On the other hand, we observe the world of, for example, Wimbledon. Experiencing the grand slam. Carefully ordered, hierarchized, extraordinarily precise world, scrupulously systematized. Let’s say, the world of stars, winners, celebrities, personalities from newspaper headlines, bankers, etc. The omnipresent scent of strawberries, exquisite perfumes, short editions of the best fashion dictators. Flowers everywhere, colors, fresh water all around. Smiling, kind people. After all, this delights us so much – the world of nihilism with a cold drink in hand.
All of this is resolved in our imagination.
Sensations of pleasure, sensations of a world of chaos, unlimited pain… exhaustion, impossibility of existence, where everything bothers, hunger, wading, craving, noise, discomfort, dust, stench, scattered carcasses, burnt tire smell, inability to find shelter, crying, crowding, roaring, wheezing, contorted faces – our civilization of eternal schizophrenia.
Piotr Jaros
English 
Polish 