Jan Możdżyński's soloshow curated by Marta Kudelska at lokal 30 in Warsaw, Poland.
Jan Możdżyński: Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky
Curator and text author: Marta Kudelska
30 Sep–3 Oct 2021
Lokal 30, Warsaw
Magic is power, power is agency. A moment of control over everything. Every muscle, every part of the body becomes flexed and stiffens. All is focused on this sole desire, a flash of unrestrained will. Momentary stagnation may appear as helplessness, but we very soon find out that action quickly follows. We no longer grope our way in the dark. We begin to create. The experience of magic, its rituals, is a deeply sensual state. It takes us to the moment when everything is more powerfully and vividly felt. Like in a fairy tale, in which blood is redder than a rose, and snow whiter than starlight.
Fear comes as a natural reaction to magic and spells. We think about an evil eye that may cover our skin with green blisters and transform our tongue into a writhing snake. This sense of threat does not have a clearly defined cause. We fear the power itself rather than horned deities, weirdly-shaped totems or the eyes of a witch that glow like embers. We involuntarily “discern” danger in such figures, afraid of what might come of them. At this moment our primal fears, anxieties, but also symbols, come to the fore. Rational explanations get stuck in your craw like a poisoned apple, and you’re seized by a strange and fascinating force.
Contemporary magic practices transgress all orders: patriarchal, sexual, but also identitarian. They no longer mean shame, devil’s marks hidden on the body, but rather approach the emancipatory development of an individual. Magic practices also offer a space to fulfil one’s erotic preferences, accept otherness, symbolise political views and demonstrate sensitivity to “liquid modernity” with the dissimilarity and diversity it produces. Jan Możdżyński’s paintings evoke such approaches. His visual tales are downright simple, they sometimes even seem childlike, and yet they offer him a tool to fight with prudish morality and guilty pleasures. Aleister Crowley’s perhaps most famous statement goes: “Love is the law, love under will”. Możdżyński’s paintings resonate with a distant echo of the British occultist’s words. Art is not a rational voice, but a sensual and affective one, which seeks to tame primal forces.
The painter’s latest series evokes a multitude of magic figures. But your stereotypical Baba Yaga, a witch, will not be found among them. Możdżynski uses paints to create magic amulets, which sit comfortably in the value system of the modern world, but he also interprets them anew. Bizarre, somewhat grotesque figures are akin to totems, but also the protagonists of the Major Arcana of the Tarot; they extol the experience of womanhood. They become a symbol of sisterhood and subversive transgression of familiar norms and rules. They liberate, but do not promise that the expected change will be for the better. It’s pure nature: menacing, brutal, but always just. Magic, art and ancient religions are all about force and power that terrifies, causes fear, enchants and captivates. These primeval forms must be constantly restored and evoked. Art and magic become Możdżyńsk’s tools of liberation, which goes beyond the normative human perspective. His work is akin to dancing, open to everyone, vivid, wild, vibrating, and its value is our gaze. This gaze, used for a moment, leads us down the Fool’s road through all possible worlds. To delve into these paintings means to intentionally provoke sensations that escape rationality – risky and liberating. The mystery, but also commonness that they share evokes the states of spiritual suspension and the inertia of wild fascination.
The exhibition was organized by Clay.Warsaw & lokal_30 as a part of the Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2021.
Photo: Bartosz Gorka