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Disco Zacheta: an ominous vision of Warsaw's future
Created: 19.12.2008 11:31
Warsaw's Zacheta National Gallery of Art is offering an ominous vision of the future of this capital city – photomontages of six significant locations transformed into what the artists predict they will look like in 40 to 50 years.
The exhibit, entitled Disco Zacheta: The Afterlife of Buildings, is presented in an unexpected setting – a dark room filled with confetti, black lights and disco balls hanging on the ceiling. The idea being that, in thirty or forty years, the gallery itself – a Baroque-era edifice of marble – will become a disco.
Each of the six montages – intricate, detailed, impeccably executed work that must have meant hours and hours of labor on Photoshop – present the vision of two artists, Kobas Laksa and Nicolas Grospierre, and their interpretation of how our current human behavior in a city will affect the landscape of the future. The ideas are presented in two ways: solemn, zest-less, journalistic photographs of the buildings and locations as they exist today done by Grospierre, juxtaposed with the composites of the future, done by Laksa.
Each piece presents something eerie and foreboding – for example, the shiny, new and highly desireable tract of real estate called Marina Mokotow, which features a man-made lake at its glimmering heart, will become a waste dump, filled to the brim with garbage. Each piece features a commentary from the artists, explaining what societal ill they are striving to visually depict. And while the text is humorous, the images speak for themselves, imparting a sort of warning message.
The irony of the exhibit is evident: artists using deliberately chosen architectural wonders that add an artistic modern twist to the current Warsaw skyline and twisting them around, dirtying them up and making them, simply put, horrific. However, the effect as a whole imbues a certain kind of horrific fascination that makes the viewer almost laugh at the ridiculousness, all the time knowing that this vision for the future is not all that off the mark if we continue living in the way we do.
The artists took the Gold Lion Award at the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, the largest architectural event worldwide that has been attraction visionaries since 1978. The project was created by curators Grzegorz Piatek and Jaroslaw Trybus and displayed in Venice from the 14 September to the 23 November.
Currently on display in Warsaw until 25 Januray 2009, there is still plenty to time to stop and see Zacheta before it becomes a disco – which could happen sooner than later since the club in the basement, Obiekt Znaleziony, recently celebrated its first anniversary. (mmj)
