About the Exhibition

Exhibition essay by Shaun Crawford

The modern empire of mass media bombards the world with an unending montage of shallow images, creating a collective hyper reality that blinds its people to the uniqueness of their own critical thinking. This is the time and space that we live in. And this is the world from which Marek Pośpiech sets out to address the collective consciousness and the matrix entwined with it. His series of works titled simply Sign I through Sign VIlI presupposes that people are submerged in this hyper reality, created by our collective actions and perceptions.

The result is a vague pattern of place – a simulation of the urban environment, reminiscent of all form and meaning.

Pośpiech hails from Rydułtowy, Poland where he graduated from the Department of Art in the Studio of Painting at the State Higher Vocational School in Raciborz in 2012. He went on to graduate from the Studio of Letterpress and the Studio of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in 2014. He utilizes a range of mediums, working in graphic art, art installation, painting, and drawing. His unique excavation of the human consciousness and its relationship to the modern hyper reality has been experienced in shows and exhibitions all over Poland, and around the world including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Thailand, and Canada.

At first glance, Pośpiech’s Sign series of prints appears ambiguous in scale. It is unclear whether the image is seen through the perspective of a microscope or a satellite. Traces of it seem familiar. Is that a brick? A curb? Shards of glass. Each has an uncanny texture and composition. But the ambiguity is Pośpiech’s challenge. In the world he has identified ,Pośpiech suggests that people are overcome by superficial and aesthetically irrelevant visuals, lured into the hyper reality as their perception and individual capacity for critical thinking are corroded. People are simultaneously influenced by, existing in, and also constructing this collective pseudo-world through their determined and sometimes unconscious activities. There is a danger in such an absentminded existence. A danger that Pośpiech calls to our attention.

His pieces exist deep beneath the hyper real. They are demanding of their audience. Citizens of the “Internet Empire” as Pośpiech calls it, must tap into a greater reservoir of perception, of consideration – of critical thought. In some ways, his show is an awakening. A quick *snap* of the fingers calling you to action to look here ,and look closely. But his work is also an invitation to the viewer to create their own meaning. Its substance is defined less by what exists within it, and more by what someone brings to it. Marek Pospiech’s precisely titled, The Dormant Consciousness/ Sleeping Awareness of a Human Within Urban Space is a collection of work that’s not just seen, it is developed in the moment; its true intention exists in the viewer’s own realm of conscious thought. It is a trigger. A catalyst. And as art often can, it reflects our world. The one we create. And the one we sometimes fail to see.

Artist Bio: Marek Pośpiech was born in 1990 in Rydułtowy. He graduated from Department of Art – Kazimierz Cieślik’s Studio of Painting – at the State Higher Vocational School (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa) in Racibórz in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, graduating from the studio of Letterpress under the supervision of professor Kaziemierz Cieslik. He practices graphic art, artistic installation, painting and drawing.