Just like bad money drives out good money, colourful rubber crap drives out relics, objects of cult, as well as signs and symbols encompassing the human spirituality and being an instrument of communication with the invisible. Fluorescent polymers drive out marble and ebony, and a new pantheon of superheroes from candy wrappers makes itself comfortable on levitating anti-gravity thrones. Has anything been taken from us? Has the cunning propaganda of mass culture secretly deprived us of the spiritual heritage by laying a cuckoo’s egg with a plastic surprise instead?
(...) Myths last longer than their physical carriers and cultural ornaments. Characters’ names may be forgotten but the energetic structure of the old eposes will not disperse in the cosmic vacuum until the human being asks questions to the Unknown. New grotesque gods are born in the dustbin of culture and the prosaic scrap turns out to be the mythical artefact showing the way to the spiritual escape from a catastrophe.(...)
A fragment of Adam Jastrzębski’s text being a commentary on the project.
Stach Szumski – born in 1992 in Gdańsk. A holder of a Bachelor’s degree awarded at the Faculty of Media Art, the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Associated with V9 Gallery and Vlepvnet Foundation from 2013 to 2016. A co-author of the Nomadic State project. Participated in numerous exhibitions and projects, such as: Late Polish Identity, the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw; The Fastest, BWA Gallery in Tarnów; OUT OF STH Biennial of External Art, BWA in Wrocław; India’s First Biennial of Contemporary Art, Fort Kochi, India; Festival Der Regionen in Linz, Austria, and many more. His output is multi-faceted, from conceptual and interactive actions, where he critically observes the aesthetics of the First World countries that is deprived of folklore (the Nomadic State project, in cooperation with Karolina Mełnicka), to purely intuitive visual practices. An artist represented by Polana Institute.