SO WHAT Group Show / 2-5 February 2017 / London, UK

design by Ewa Goral / photo by Kuba Mozolewski

Doomed Gallery Dalston is proud to present the third edition of SO WHAT that will focus on contemporary Polish still life photography. We have invited Fresh From Poland to co-curate the show alongside our curator Anna-Sophia John. This is the second issue of our So What x Poland show featuring an immersive piece by Magda Buczek. Since the first collaborative show in Krakow, exhibited as part of the Fringe Festival, the project has evolved through the exploration of photography’s contemporary still life scene. The gallery and photography platform Doomed has provided a playground for this ongoing discourse to flourish - encouraging an exchange with different countries and cultures.

photo by Filip Berndt

So What Poland includes the work of established up and coming Polish artists that are concerned with documenting the situations of our present domestic landscapes. The photographs focus on the depiction of wittily constructed inanimate objects - ranging from traditional approaches to otherworldly surreal structures; these works allow us to view contemporary familiar and mundane items from a new perspective through borrowing technical characteristics from collage, painting, sculpture and photography.

photo by Magda Buczek

The still life genre is concerned with the documentation of inanimate objects over time through mediums that are appropriate to a particular period. As we are increasingly enhancing our reality with online platforms and screen-based imagery, the objects that we engage with and our experiences have transformed. Our lives have become subject to an online/offline pendulum that draws on a new array of senses and further challenges the concept of image and text materially.

photo by Natalia Podgórska

For this edition we asked the Polish artist Magda Buczek to explore what might happen to the still life image in a post internet era. How will these developments shape the future of the still life genre? What medium will we chose to express these multidimensional situations that make up the future and continuously evolving domestic landscapes? Buczek challenges these ideas in her installation SLOW DOWNLOAD - an immersive project fueled with gifs and Instagram-enhanced colours that tell the story of a jet-set generation stuck between the offline and the online.

Please join us at Doomed Gallery Dalston for the opening of So What Poland ft. Slow Download on Thursday 2nd February 2017 from 6-9pm. The show will continue until Sunday the 5th February 7pm.

Friday, the 3rd at 7pm we are hosting an artist talk: Magda Buczek in conversation with the curators Anna-Sophia John and Gosia Fricze.

Doomed Gallery
65 Ridley Rd, London
2-5  February  2017

ARTISTS: Katarzyna  Balicka, Filip  Berendt, Magda  Buczek, Justyna  Chrobot, Dorotka Kaczmarek, Kasia  Klimpel, Kuba  Mozolewski, Natalia  Podgórska

CURATORS: Anna-Sophia John, Gosia Fricze, Grazyna  Siedlecka

ORGANISED by: Doomed  Gallery, Fresh From Poland

PARTNERS: prism Magazine, University of Westminster - Westphoto