Justyna Smoleń: Fragile Dreams

Fragile Dreams is a cross-sectional solo exhibition by Justyna Smoleń, a Krakow younger-generation artist, presenting objects, sculptures and installations she has created in the last five years as well as premiere projects.

Trinkets, broken crockery and figurines, seashells kept as souvenirs and the occasional tankard, medal or jubilee trophy – these are the materials Justyna Smoleń works with in the series of collages and ceramic objects she has been creating since 2018. The artist uses these objects to take a critical look at our phantasms – mental constructs that psychoanalysts view as projections of desires, fears and other unconscious content. According to Slavoj Žižek, their function is to mask the contradictions and tensions inherent in any ideology, enabling people to maintain the illusion of a coherent world. They often act as a defence mechanism by organising our desires and offer narratives that allow us to avoid confronting the Real – an intangible yet traumatic aspect of reality.

Through mundane artefacts, Justyna Smoleń examines historical and contemporary phantasms, which, in culture and art including applied art, take the form of idealised images of love, success or national identity. The artist takes a close look at figurines created in communist countries during the times of political transition, when the images of ballerinas, exotic animals or idyllic love displayed against the uninspiring furniture provided a touch of relief amidst a grey reality. From broken porcelain Smoleń creates hybridised, grotesque forms that by playing on associations critically reference sentimental notions about romantic relationships – be they human or interspecies, about consumerism and attitudes to the body and gender. Meanwhile, in the Lava series, brimming with organic forms combined with heavy stoneware pottery, the artist examines the dark, bubbling undercurrents of the national subconscious, exploring themes related to Sarmatism and fairground folk culture. She uses the figurines of coarse dwarves, rough-and-ready mountain robbers and miners or hunting scenes to deconstruct patriarchal national myths. The exhibition Fragile Dreams demonstrates the tension between the recurrent reactionary ideas and attempts to transform them so as to create a smooth flow of new visions of reality.