One man’s trash is another man’s treasure
Every day, the world as we know it confronts us with an endless array of choices. Consumption shapes the flow of our lives, allowing us to move freely through a vast field of objects, relationships, experiences and identities. Objects multiply around us more quickly than we can manage, creating a labyrinth of boxes, empty bottles and unopened faces still waiting to be worn. Identity becomes as much a product as what we find on a store shelf.
Where is the line between ordinary consumption and excess? What is the difference between a collector and a hoarder? What significance do our objects truly hold? Who am I amongst all my belongings? There are many more questions that accompany Helena Parys’s exhibition. Trip, slip, hazard is a journey through a labyrinth of tiny treasures and traces of everyday life. Piles of objects, or trinkets found among discarded things, intertwine with self-portraits in the form of painting and sculpture. Life amidst objects thus becomes both the initiator of the creative process and its main driving force, demanding a variety of forms that allow for the expression of its inconsistency, non-homogeneity and (extra)ordinariness. That which has been rejected by others is endowed with a completely new significance. The object demands that a broader meaning be ascribed to it. Things become a starting point for reflection upon our identity. They challenge us with the question of which side is truly the organiser of meaning and existence: us, or that which we accumulate?
The artist freely manipulates form, combining methods and materials typically associated with high art with objects of everyday use. The viewer is confronted with an apparent heterogeneity of form, that ultimately becomes reconciled through the presence of Parys herself. The artist turns her own image into a site of inquiry, weaving it into a constellation of everyday objects, creating a structure of reality co-inhabited by the individual and objects – a structure that continuously reshapes itself. The boundary between the ordinary and what has traditionally been reserved for high art becomes blurred, thus creating an image of reality that defies simple hierarchisation and leads the viewer towards a reflection that eludes unambiguous categorisation. Parys’s work intertwines with her surroundings, leaving a trace of the reciprocal influence between artist and space, drawing the viewer into the very center of the life-as-creation.
Text by Anna Stelmach