Artist: Kasper Lecnim
Title: New Normality. Old Habits
Curator: Dawid Radziszewski
Venue: CCA Kronika, Bytom, Poland
Surprisingly enough, this is not a post-apocalyptic exhibition. Neither did we rise from the dead, nor did Anything (a UFO or the Saviour) come to solve the dispute over the last things.
The normality mentioned in the title, which came after the catastrophe caused by the flutter of bat wings in a soup served to an eccentric food lover, apart from the chaos brought an unexpected chance. The chance, called by Konrad Wojnowski the usefulness of the catastrophe, lies in the need to think about the end of the world we have known in order to stop despairing about the cracked crystal palace – this hated interior of overwhelming boredom. Spring has come, shaky, swollen and almost three months late, but it is difficult to
believe the usual “it will be fine”. What is it going to be like? Certainly different, harder
You, who enter this place, arm yourself with hope – this is a warning to the curious ones. This place means: where the old-fashioned faith in the continuous economic development and the end of history is no longer possible. There are angry brushes, barking in the rubble and moved by an invisible hand (but not the free market’s hand), there are shaking bushes although not the burning ones. Lecnim’s New Normality. Old Habits is permeated with the spirit of self-organisation, but no one there is interested in finding an alternative, they rather want to crack it quickly and effectively. This record of post-catastrophic tactics reflects a concept that is reminiscent of Michel de Certeau, a thinker we know mainly from the story of trampling lawns. This time, however, it is about a tangle of the economy of the gift, the aesthetics of tricks and the ethics of persistence; this time we are not going to trample lawns but trample the possible out of the so far unthinkable.
Aleksy Wójtowicz
Kasper Lecnim (born in 1990, Poland; lives and works in Warsaw) – a visual artist, graduate of the E. Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław. He uses many media. He has already produced scarfs, organised removals, cleared snow, crashed cars and challenged directors of cultural institutions to duels. He likes mistakes and small provocations. He works individually or in a duo with Irmina Rusicka. His works have been presented during individual and collective exhibitions held at such places as: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; Wrocław Contemporary Museum; Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kiev; BWA Warsaw Gallery; Gdańsk City
Gallery; Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau, Dresden. He is represented by Szara Gallery.
