Through the Ribs

Frederick Kiesler’s archive in Vienna includes an article about a fatal accident that occurred in a nuclear laboratory in Los Alamos in June 1946. During a routine experiment, there was a leakage of radioactive material: the attending scientists felt a sensation of warmth and witnessed a slowly spreading blue glow. A few days later, two of them were dead. Contact with radioactive material leads to accelerated degradation of human DNA. As a result, the genetic code disintegrates into a pool of basic proteins.

Piotr Łakomy’s works can be viewed as a contaminated landscape, marked by a central void around which objects-sculptures gravitate. This is why they can be referred to as post-objects – material structures existing on the outskirts of a past event. This central event, which has both an individual and social dimension, has led to a gradual degradation, and subsequently, mutation of the genetic code of the entire reality. It is this process that aptly renders the nature of Łakomy’s work, where the previous boundaries between organic and artificial materials are being challenged. However, the blurring of these boundaries is not spontaneous but comes as a result of an explosive power, which triggered a reconfiguration of the pre-existing structural order.

The exhibition Through the Ribs aims to illustrate the connections between the works of Piotr Łakomy and the artistic practice of the Austrian-born American architect Frederick Kiesler.

– Dorota Michalska