Grzegorz Bukalski
Surface Tension [Napięcie Powierzchniowe] (2024)
We cannot see our own face unless we look into a mirror, and even then, what we see is a mediated image - much like how our face appears in the eyes of another person. This paradox is clearly reflected in our human search for identity, and it serves as the source of discussions regarding what we consider authentic and what we define as a creation, metaphorically referred to as a 'mask'. In a literal sense, however, a 'mask' is an almost magical object that enables a phantasmic transformation of our self, thereby allowing us to assume any identity.
As the eminent mythographer Karl Kerényi (1897 - 1973) once put it, the mask is a 'tool of unifying transformation.' On one hand, it conceals what some claim to be our authentic face, yet at the exact same moment, it reveals and unleashes the true nature of its wearer, which normally remains hidden beneath the cloak of social norms. This makes me wonder: what, then, is authenticity? Why do we usually associate it with the absence of a mask? If we were to strip away every single one of them, wouldn’t we simply become animals, condemned to a life driven by primal instincts?
By visiting communities that freely employ the mask in various senses of the word, I explore the thin line between the authentic and the created, where the profound tension between these two variables has become the focal point of my photographic observations.
26 pigment prints on semi-matte baryta paper (various sizes, unframed), 1 print on canvas 120x180cm (suspended from the ceiling), 1 collage 50x50cm (14 Instax prints 86 x 108mm in a faux fur frame)
