Artists: Ula Lucińska & Michał Knychaus
Exhibition title: Overly sexy, smart, edgy and dangerous
Venue: DriveDrive, Nicosia, Cyprus
Date: September 28 – October 18, 2018
Photography: Panayiotis Mina / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and DriveDrive, Nicosia, Cyprus
Overly sexy, smart, edgy and dangerous
by Inside Job (Ula Lucińska & Michał Knychaus)
„…there was something sculpted about the creature—if one can imagine a sculpture done in chromed spikes, razor wire, blades, thorns, and smooth metal carapace. It was large—more than a meter taller than I, and I am not short”.
The above quotation describes Shrike – an avatar from Dan Simmons’ books, sent from the future by the Absolute Artificial Intelligence. As it turned out later there were several Shrikes and each one was programmed by a different group representing the same complex and chaotic conflict between the unimaginable forces. In a similar way, players – telepresent in countless virtual arenas – compete with each other. Dressed in digital armours allowing them to break the laws of physics, they travel through space-time at the speed of fiber optic cables. They hide their personalities under the mask of colourful and respectable avatars. Some of them are innocent, others are sexy and others are repulsive or completely abstract. During the hottest moments of the fight, they throw messages that can convey true political meaning. An enemy is an enemy – whether it’s a man, an alien or a demon. Every piece of equipment is an advanced product dream. Every smallest blade can be personalised and improved.
A series of objects prepared for the exhibition Overly sexy, smart, edgy and dangerous builds a specific image of an abandoned battlefield. Hanging on frayed clothes, the blades seem to be a fantasy about a conflict that could happen in some distant world – or on another planet. It’s hard to recognize the time in which this fight could take place, or even imagine the physiognomy of the fighters.
Sound: Haze Anthology (mix), RAW SILVER (Honest Electronics) https://soundcloud.com/raw-silver/raw-silver-haze-anthology-mix
Inside Job is a collective created by Ula Lucińska and Michał Knychaus. Their artistic practice is based on carrying out interdisciplinary projects using the latest media and materials. They focus on the process of creating a new identity which emerges when cut-off from the domesticated cultural contexts on the unknown visual territories and in the space of the changing language. The aesthetic experiments use mostly the subversive incorporation of fashion and sub-culture elements of contemporaneity.
Many of their to-date realisations use the “product” category, understood also as an artistic product, as well as how it functions in dispersed systems. Inside Job regards art as an adequate platform of communication between people living in a hybrid, post-digital world. They presented their works during art residencies (e.g. Kulturfabrik, Burgdorf, Switzerland), at individual exhibitions (e.g. :SKALA Gallery, 9/10 Gallery, Poznań, Poland; Hot Wheels Projects, Athens, Greece) and collective (e.g. Athens Digital Arts Festival 2018, Athens; Galeria SKALA, Poznań; Galeria DuflonRacz, Berno, Switzerland; Ostrale Biennale of Contemporary Arts, Dresden, Germany; Musrara Mix Festival, Jerusalem, Izrael; New Waves, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Virginia, USA; Callegenera Festival, Monterrey, Mexico). They are the finalists of this year’s prestigious, international Artagon competition in Paris and in 2016 they were merited with the Santander Universidades award for emerging artists. Grantees of the programme carried out by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Polish Culture Around the World.
