ca.2009

There is a kind of past that isn’t quite history. We cannot nostalgically nestle down in it and pleasantly reminisce about it, because it is too close to the present, yet not identical to it. It is filled with places and things that cause discomfort, like pants your heel steps on (when I look at the photos, at any rate, all the clothes strike me as uncomfortable), iPods, compact digital devices that take awful pictures, cold Poznań apartments with mattresses on the floor. What was the soundtrack? It no longer matters. If they were people, the objects that fill this place would now be middle-aged. The television sets and kitchen appliances from 2009 are already ripe for replacement, though most of the things wouldn’t quite be called junk—they are neither old, nor new. The buildings erected at the time, with plaques that read “Co-financed by European Funds,” have lost their pleasant smell, although the warranties have all expired you still hang on to them, and so on. It is not easy to capture the flavor of those times, some critical difference between then and now. It could be because the first decade of the twenty-first century has no identity as distinct as the 1990s or 1980s, but no doubt we still need more distance from it. At thirteen years old, the background still seems blurred. No matter how many times one says “do you remember this, or that,” trying to recall something quaint from those times, it turns out to have been from other years, people, and places. At this exhibition we are presenting works from ca. 2009, some by artists who are quite well known, others less so. It’s a journey we are taking for no special reason. For the first time, a dog will be taking part in one of our exhibitions.