Art of Laura Pawela, Poland

The art of Laura Pawela grows out of her fascination with the contemporary world, in which the omnipresent media have created the situation of the erosion of the boundary between the private and the public spheres. The end of the 20th century removed art from its individual, handcrafted character and, in consequence, a significant part of artistic activity was brought to the zone of the virtual world and the Internet. Pawela has restored real dimensions to art. Within the long-term "Reallaura" project the artist paints pictures in the aesthetics of displays or "Commodore" or "Atari" computer graphics. The pictures present strands from the artist's life in the form of comics packed with little drawings with speech bubbles, developing in terms of meaning the formal aspects of "history in images", already utilised by Roy Lichtenstein. The artist criticizes the contemporary information society, in which a metaphysical message may be reduced to a banal slogan. We are immersed in the virtual world, in which it is almost impossible to recognize that which is true. Reality has been replaced by simulation, which became immediately accepted as obligatory, and communication became a blend of phrases. Pawela has, however, succeeded in entering the polemic with these truths   - "no time for being ok".
The basic form of artistic expression in the works of Pawela is the cold computer language of the Internet world penetrating our daily existence. It turns out that two apparently different worlds are becoming an integrated entity. The so-called "real" becomes less real than the virtual reality. Thus there is no objective reality, as there is no objective, generally binding, morality - "each has such a morality, as he has a nature " - states Nietzsche.
The philosopher's theories have become one of the main inspirations for the project "In the church without magic", to be presented in the Contemporary Art Gallery in Opole. The works comprising the exhibition are a series of video...