The threshold (“próg”), referred to in the title, is the moment when the rational, secularized world has lost its power to explain reality. Today, its components, which for decades seemed stable, are breaking down: institutions, science, technological optimism, and even the very concept of progress. As Umberto Eco wrote back in the 1970s, every society at the end of its rationalism enters a new Middle Ages: a fragmented, symbolic era, full of small beliefs, local truths, and scattered authorities. Globalization resembles the universalism of the Middle Ages as a supranational order, creating a sense of “the world as a system” and limiting the sovereignty of individuals and states. However, the goal of capitalist universalism is no longer salvation, but infinite growth. With the loss of the future, we begin to look to the past; the language of aesthetic splendor and semantic depth returns; the aesthetics of flow, biomorphic and corporeal. Dense symbolism and symptomatic monsters embody fears, conflicts, and desires.

 

The work of Paweł Olszczyński and Julia Szczerbowska stems from the intuition that we are increasingly entering a Gothic, borderline, excessive era. In the next turn of the old cycle, the energies pulsating in the Middle Ages and fin-de-siècle return. A new aesthetic is born out of metahistorical tension – drawing on decadence, reflecting post-apocalyptic moods and spiritual crisis. In the work of both artists, man finds himself in a liminal state, a melancholy of ecological anxiety, a transcendence arising from crisis.

 

Symbols, carriers of universal emotions and fears, return in Julia Szczerbowska's work like persistent memories that demand to be worked through. The artist's oil paintings take place at the threshold and beyond, in a state where the climactic event has already taken place, but its echo still resonates in the body. The scattered, elusive faces in the works of both artists remind us that contemporary contact with one's own identity arises from a place of conflict.

 

Olszczyński deliberately returns to classic works, focusing on the figure of the vampire, which here serves as a metaphor for the decay of reality, civilization, or inner fatigue, exposure to temptation and doom. He also refers to toxic emotional entanglements, being stuck in overwhelming interpersonal relationships. The motif of bats gathered around a candle, like moths flying towards the fire, becomes a metaphor for the desire to transcend oneself. It is a mixture of temptation, destruction, and spiritual instinct that leads towards the light, even if it is to blind and burn. In Szczerbowska's work, it is insects, which in Art Nouveau were an icon of modernist sensibility, that become a sign of the coming climate crisis. These smallest organisms, most sensitive to environmental changes, gain the status of disturbing witnesses to the catastrophe, with human eyes and consciousness.

 

Art Nouveau aesthetics, formerly associated with decorativeness and sensuality, here become a language of resistance, mourning, and warning against the world's loss of balance. Organic lines and plant tendrils serve a dual function: on the one hand, they introduce harmony and elegance, on the other, they create visual excess and ornamental overload. Here and there, they transform into bat wings, resembling snares, a trap set.

 

In the works presented at the exhibition, art does not so much imitate life as reveal its darkest, least polished fragments. The telephone imitates life, providing a simulation of it, a flickering reflection on the screen. Art, on the contrary, does not pretend, but reveals. It becomes a language for diagnosing post-secular reality and a ritual for regaining sensitivity, a place where we return to what is real.

 

Curator and author of text: Marianna Łomża

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Paweł Olszczyński

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Born in 1985 in Krakow. Graduate of the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and Hochshule für Gestaltung, Offenbach am Main. In 2010-2012, he co-founded the New Roman Gallery and collective in Krakow. Scholarship holder of the Mayor of Krakow (2011) and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2016). He mainly uses drawing, but also creates paintings and ceramic objects. He lives and works in Warsaw. Olszczyński is interested in modernist sculptures and architectural ceramics from the 1950s and 1970s, especially those decorating public spaces such as cinemas and theaters. He also draws on the tradition of Krakow emblems above the entrances to tenement houses, mythology, and trends such as Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts. His works also feature references to queerness and hybrid beings, chimeras, and sphinxes. 

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Julia Szczerbowska

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Born in 1999 in Bielsko-Biała. She obtained an MFA at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. She is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the extended image space studio under the supervision of Professor Daniel Richter. She mainly works in painting, writing, and sculpture. Her artistic practice focuses on topics such as climate depression and hydrofeminism, which she explores through rich symbolism rooted in cultural and often religious traditions. Using visual language, she explores the complex connections between human emotions and the natural world, delving into eroticism, longing, and loss. Winner of the 16th Loostro Autumn Art Salon at BWA Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski (3rd place) and the 12th edition of the nationwide competition New Image, New Perspective (award from the Director of MOS Gorzów Wielkopolski).