Janek Simon – Vortex 2

Vortex 2 was conceived in response to a bunch of artist’s associations related to his different experiences. Years ago, he came across a seat of an unknown church in a deserted commercial building in Lublin. During his stay in Hungary, he discovered a camp built by the homeless at the premises of the Budapest Metro, where a sermonizer was preaching some unknown faith. The 1980s in Poland, just like the present times this exhibition deals with, saw the exhaustion of language able to describe the world. The communist regime collapsed and lost its moral legitimacy, however due to a significant economic crisis, capitalism and its consumerism utopia proved unimaginable. For this reason, around the year 1984 or 1985, when reality was slowly rebuilding, we saw an outburst of all kinds of New Age-like philosophies, Satanist, Hare Krishna movements, beliefs in UFOs and the like. We witnessed the appearance of numerous vernacular hybrids of different creeds, emerged on the spur of the moment as alternatives to the commonly known forms of spirituality, and made out of hastily collected pieces, shreds and records. The work makes references to this diagnosis. The artist has built a pyramid – the universal symbol of transcendence glowing with light.