“Southern Guild presents Solastalgia, multidisciplinary artist Stanislaw Trzebinski’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, opening 8 September (until 10 November). The featured body of functional sculpture and artwork explores a dark vision of nature’s continuation after the extinction of man. In the current state of climate alarm, Trzebinski expresses a grief for what has already been lost to man’s rapacious self-interest.
“I’ve been experiencing what environmental philosopher and sustainability professor Glenn A. Albrecht calls solastalgia,” he explains, “a nostalgia for the loss of places that used to give me solace – that made me feel fully human. Our very home, the Earth, is being ruined, despoiled. So much is already lost, and I’m homesick in my own home.” – southernguild.co.za
Entering Southern Guild Gallery’s spatial location – high ceilings and wide walls, as the perfect canvas for its rotation of shows – feels slightly different this time. To the right handside, the area has been carved out for sculptor and artist Stanislaw Trzebinski’s second show exhibition: Solastalgia. The space is expanded, fitted with pastel interior walls in powder blue, lilac, soft-pink and mint; colours that gently coax the senses, lulling one to edge closer. This juxtaposition is intentional – because what awaits, is an eerie, fascinating collection of pieces reflecting a much more insidious theme – the pastels do well to prime one for the confrontation.
Stanislaw is deeply concerned with the ecological devastation heading our way. In fact, it’s already here; and who knows how quickly the fabric of nature as we know it, will dissolve around us? Imagining a future of apocalyptic proportions is one thing – but for the artist, these works imagine the aftermath. We, human beings, are no more; in fact, all that has survived is the resilient ubiquity of bacteria and fungi; this time, with far stranger replication and production processes, possibly spurred on by vastly different conditions for evolution on earth, than we might know today. The show notes say it best, “acid-tolerant amoeba, burrowing cave dwellers, giant carnivorous mushrooms sheathed in fungal, porous skirts. The organisms have been borne of biological necessity, shedding their own layers of being and seizing only what is needed to survive.” I am a dreamer of what life might look like at other ends of the cosmos, and so despite the harrowing timeline that would occur to arrive at these life-forms; I find myself totally taken with this narrative; and in fact, oddly invigorated. The existential dread of our own existence as human beings is perhaps a fate already sealed – but Solastalgia is a stunning alchemization of the triumph of life – with or without us. It is worth remembering how enriching nature is, and how our presence in this temporal fraction of the universe’s lifespan is quite an exceptional miracle; no matter how that will end, or when. More and more, the artist’s role in the world is to be the revealers of our ecological truths; whether for activism or imaginative purposes, and Stolastalgia cuts an exceptional balance of both.
The works are a poignant reflection of adaptability – and the utter strangeness and beauty of living organisms – alongside Trzebinski’s own inner-adaptability in his practice, blending together his mastery of bronze-casting alongside a foray into a new medium of glass-blowing; rigid materials make porous, growing forms – as if one closes their eyes and entered a kaleidoscopic. Each piece is thoughtfully, brilliantly named – Humongous Fungus, Doomsday Prepper, Neo-Primordial Soup – a few such names, the rest I urge you to view directly; as ever, Southern Guild hosts some of the most compelling work Africa has to offer.
View at Southern Guild Gallery, Cape Town: 08.09.2022 – 10.11.2022
Written by: Holly Bell Beaton
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