Konrad Wyrebek | 2°C above acCLI-M8 X

Galerie Ron Mandos is proud to present 2°C above acCLI-M8 X a solo show by Konrad Wyrebek curated by Domenico de Chirico. Wyrebek addresses the issue of Climate Change / Global Warming in close interrelation with the noisy global information system, by aesthetically investigating its consequences, causes, influences and the changes it generates.

The exhibition title is a cryptic descriptive pun - in itself corrupted - containing the words:

2°C = it’s the average projected rise of temperatures on earth, and the line that scientist fear we will cross.
the word "acclimate"
the word “climate”
the word “mate”= M8 - as a average person in our society (maybe not so well informed or bothered about the environment and global issues but more focused on they own playground and day to day reality)
the word “climax”
Global information system The amount of information we are exposed to on a daily basis, can be interrupted, transformed and even corrupted; which also raises the question as to how far is humanity already in the trajectory towards melding into the digital world— and its ever faster rate of information spreading scope. A trajectory that will eventually lead to assimilate the human mind and body to the "machine". On the one hand a big part of both traditional and new—digital—media, aren’t but just drops in the ocean of the day-to-day news feeds of the wider audiences. For the more attentive though— they look more like a flood. It should also be considered that the same media are businesses with their own set of interests and commercial objectives; and the latter can account for a lot in the general line of their informative output. The actual outcome is a wide and subtle system made up largely of manipulation and noise.

On the other hand disinformation causes the spread of deliberately false and distorted news to cover for inconvenient truths; that is precisely the tool used by power to exert control over people, by diverting their attention towards trivial topics or purposely orchestrated situations. Powerful state apparatuses regularly coordinate the spreading of false news and misleading information in order to support the establishment.

In the meantime, the general public is kept stocked on TV sports channels or mushy soap operas. Their attention controlled via the lowest forms of entertainment and through the creation of precarious socio-economic conditions which force individuals to be mostly concerned with how to make ends meet, thus being oblivious towards broader themes— i.e. politics, corruption and environmental issues. For this reason, the most pressing need is presently that of educating people on how to attend to their own awareness and information.

Climate Change On the global warming front, we’ve reached an alarming climate change milestone. The message is clear: global warming is no longer a future threat but a present reality —and a menacing one for our present civilizations. In addition, the world’s appearance is constantly shifting and mutating. With the concepts of environment and landscape increasingly tending to overlap, they’ve both become subject to similar consequences deriving from human actions.

Threading through a flowing succession of upcoming pixelated images, the show advocates for the chorus of a great part of the scientific community who believes that without further commitment and action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world will have to face a series of changes potentially disruptive for the Earth’s ecosystem and its people. Climate change has thusly become an ethical issue, mainly because those who are and will be most negatively affected by it are those who are least accountable for having caused the problem.

The Artist Konrad Wyrebek is a young British Polish artist who lives and works in London. In his attempts at outlining a personal visual vademecum, his work unveils an unexpected beauty in the corrupted and pixelated images typically run by contemporary mass media and new media —the main communication channels of current times aesthetics’ frame of reference. Wyrebek’ mark making—in his large format abstract paintings and video paintings—speculate on the interplay between the artist’s emotional gesture on the one hand and the rational calculated contribution of technology on the other. Each of the paintings in his body of work is unique and every finishing layer is treated with a complex process. Images are pixelated via an array of deliberately set digital compression processes, resulting in a final amount of data corruption caused by their transferring through different software programs and devices. The artist’s work process can be defined as open-ended since his paintings offer the possibility of different interpretations by making people wonder about and question what they’re looking at —in the context of the real effective world around them. Text by Domenico de Chirico