MAKESHIFT— the permanent provisional that has become a symptom of the present time
Artists:
Alicja Bielawska
Piotr Łakomy
Gizela Mickiewicz
Emmeline de Mooji
Dan Rees
Honza Zamojski
Kindly invite you to the opening of the exhibition on Wednesday, 1st June at 6 p.m.
The category of the temporary, makeshift, and provisional is the starting point for Makeshift project. We mean here the permanent provisional that has become a symptom of the present time. The provisional can be an asset when it means ingenuity and smartness in the creation of functional material objects. A temporary usefulness of a given thing offers immediate joy. However, more often than not it is associated with sloppiness, superficial being in the world, short-lived reflection or even an absence of any such reflection. It is synonymous with short-lived action and a lack of clear objectives. Paradoxically, it may become a permanent state when the difference between a sustainable resolution of problems, a quick removal of obstacles and their hasty and temporary resolution becomes obliterated. A question arises, then, whether we deal with hastiness or a genius of creation? Perhaps there is no such thing as a perfect state and perfection has never really been a human province.
However, a provisional state cannot be exclusively seen in negative terms, as an absence of long-term thinking. I am interested first of all in the moment of suspension, of not telling everything, without a straightforward statement that temporary means bad. Makeshift projects addresses this question at a certain distance, with a pinch of irony and humour, in a playful manner. This type of provisional activities may prove of more significance. They disorient the viewer and dislodge his habitual behaviour and perception, going beyond a functional perception of the world. Useless objects in themselves may be also the province of art. Showing within a gallery objects that are “useless” (in the meaning of Kantian aesthetics) is justified as long as it is coupled with critical reflection, which is of permanent value.
Makeshift moreover effects a rehabilitation of old, faulty objects that can be made use of in successive renditions. It shows the importance of an increased sensitivity to an object, which exercises the attentive observation of its environment and encourages the application of its creative potential. To do something out of nothing. To be aware of each and every tiny fraction of tangible reality, to examine scrupulously and attentively each and every tiny manifestation of the actual world. Gestures that lead to such representations are suspended between a certain deliberate idea, a pattern, and a purely intuitive approach to matter.
Curator: Anna Czaban
