Wrong place, wrong time

Wrong place, wrong time
Exhibition by Science Club Najlepsze pod słońcem (The best under the sun) & XIII Painting Studio | UAP Poznan
Science Club discussi_64 | Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw
Gallery Nowa Scena UAP, 28 Marcinkowskiego Ave.
Opening: 26.03.2025, 18:00
Duration of exhibition: 26.03 – 13.04.2025
Curators: Krzysztof Mętel, Paweł Nocuń

Being a human means always being out of place and out of time. When you are young, you want to be old, and when you are old, you want to be young. You come into the world too early and leave it too early, for half of your life you are not ready for anything, and in the other half it is too late for everything. You are never supposed to learn, but if you became a painter, you have relatively little chance of making a career as a doctor and vice versa. The times are such that you have to act quickly, because it is easy to fall behind. But no matter what comes of it, life is always somewhere else.

The grass is greener on the other side. If you study in Poznan and are serious about your artistic career, your colleagues will place bets on how quickly you will move to Warsaw or abroad. You move out quickly and you do quite well, but just as quickly you start fantasizing about escaping to the countryside. You don’t escape because big-city life has its advantages and you have fomo and a lot to lose, but as a compromise you often apply for residencies in quiet places.

The times are such that more than ever it is about nothing, rather than something. The extra value that makes things worth the effort, that somehow you never have direct access to. You get closer to it with every painting you start, but when the paint dries and the work is done, you have lost it and must search further. Virtual reality is not about the world becoming a simulation, because it has always been that. Only this time the value of what is not there is unprecedentedly high. Donuts with a hole are more expensive than regular ones, as are gluten-free bread, caffeine-free coffee, and home-based protests.

I think that the Academy of Fine Arts would have no right to exist if at least one student did not try to force it on everyone during every class that he or she did not have time, place and way, and that what he or she brought here was not quite the right thing. The ethics of teaching makes me answer that this is not the time and place for these cheap excuses, which does not change the fact that I buy them every time anyway, because I am convinced that no place is good enough and the right moment never comes. These are just abstractions that are invented after the fact and that are experienced only in retrospect. Setting up easels in crowded studios and cramped offices is real torture and I take the word of every student who complains that he or she feels uncomfortable. The joke is that I will believe hi mor her just as much when, in ten years, he or she tells me, sitting in a spacious loft, that the best has already been done and now the world has turned upside down.

Weronika Wronecka