All at once
Cracow, 27.06.2025 - 18.08.2025
Artists:
Karol Szczur
Karol Szczur
One of the frequent motifs driving the action of 18th- and 19th-century operas was the change of identity. Characters disguise themselves, put on masks, impersonate someone else. Sometimes to seduce, sometimes to help someone, they change gender or social class to reverse the course of events. In these spectacular, though at times quite grotesque substitutions lies the potential of fluid motion, shifting the personalities of protagonists. It is the reality of carnival, where the rules of hierarchical and class society are temporarily suspended, giving way to new arrangements that attempt to negotiate their place within the established order.
For years, Karol Szczur has been exploring the processes through which norms erode, affiliations shift, and hierarchies, at least potentially, can be overturned. He switches the dynamics of late capitalism into carnival mode, further intensifying the processes that govern its virtual iconography. In doing so, he reaches for the most primordial tool of identity modification, the mask. Used in ancient rituals, the mask is one of the most basic elements in creating fiction and speculation. By covering the face, it generates new potentiality, new relations, new interpersonal bonds.
Szczur’s masks are masks of late modernity, transmitted through chains of mediated images drawn from social media, films, TV series, reality shows, or skincare advertisements. Never before has the visual presence of the face been so overwhelming. Faces are subject to constant transformation and care, plastic both in the physical and virtual sense. The masks presented in the exhibition, sometimes traumatically deformed, sometimes grotesquely restyled, sometimes reminiscent of BDSM accessories, build a coherent narrative about the struggle for subjectivity. The idea of the mask here takes on a full and brutally literal form, altering the actual physiognomy. I no longer know who I am; I have worn several faces and now I don’t even know which one was meant to be the one I wanted to wear. In the reality of contemporary liberal capitalism, the abundance of choice entraps identity, forcing it into a state of constant tension and responsibility. The echoes of this tension can be found in these hysterical visages that identify the human being through the prism of distant pop-cultural transformations, showing, as if in a distorted mirror, its fragmented subjectivity.
The artist’s work carries both subversive and affirmative power. All at Once is an exhibition about the piling up of meanings, hybrids of reality, the potential for change, but also about the excess, overproduction, and inflation of meaning that surrounds us. When you are masked, you are someone else for the world. But when you remove it, does your face remain the same as before? Does the truth of our image exist at all, or is it itself another veil, subject to constant metamorphosis, shielding us from the gaze of the other?
Karol Szczur, born in 1990 in Kolbuszowa, graduated in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He lives and works in London. He works with painting, textile art, and photography. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and artistic projects.
For years, Karol Szczur has been exploring the processes through which norms erode, affiliations shift, and hierarchies, at least potentially, can be overturned. He switches the dynamics of late capitalism into carnival mode, further intensifying the processes that govern its virtual iconography. In doing so, he reaches for the most primordial tool of identity modification, the mask. Used in ancient rituals, the mask is one of the most basic elements in creating fiction and speculation. By covering the face, it generates new potentiality, new relations, new interpersonal bonds.
Szczur’s masks are masks of late modernity, transmitted through chains of mediated images drawn from social media, films, TV series, reality shows, or skincare advertisements. Never before has the visual presence of the face been so overwhelming. Faces are subject to constant transformation and care, plastic both in the physical and virtual sense. The masks presented in the exhibition, sometimes traumatically deformed, sometimes grotesquely restyled, sometimes reminiscent of BDSM accessories, build a coherent narrative about the struggle for subjectivity. The idea of the mask here takes on a full and brutally literal form, altering the actual physiognomy. I no longer know who I am; I have worn several faces and now I don’t even know which one was meant to be the one I wanted to wear. In the reality of contemporary liberal capitalism, the abundance of choice entraps identity, forcing it into a state of constant tension and responsibility. The echoes of this tension can be found in these hysterical visages that identify the human being through the prism of distant pop-cultural transformations, showing, as if in a distorted mirror, its fragmented subjectivity.
The artist’s work carries both subversive and affirmative power. All at Once is an exhibition about the piling up of meanings, hybrids of reality, the potential for change, but also about the excess, overproduction, and inflation of meaning that surrounds us. When you are masked, you are someone else for the world. But when you remove it, does your face remain the same as before? Does the truth of our image exist at all, or is it itself another veil, subject to constant metamorphosis, shielding us from the gaze of the other?
Karol Szczur, born in 1990 in Kolbuszowa, graduated in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He lives and works in London. He works with painting, textile art, and photography. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and artistic projects.
