Cezary Poniatowski: Deep House

The exhibition titled Deep House at MeetFactory presents a large-scale installation by Polish artist Cezary Poniatowski. With time frozen at the “doomsday clock” - a few minutes past midnight - the gallery transforms into a surreally ghostly apartment abandoned by its original inhabitants. A microcosm of insects, bacteria, and viruses is quietly taking over all the everyday objects here; rolled-up rugs, their shapes resembling staring reptiles or the shrouds of human spectres, become new post-human protagonists - sometimes comfortably seated in a massage chair, at other times perhaps inhabiting glass terrariums and constantly watching the viewer. The insect-like objects play with things like children learning how a household works, how to mimic human habits, rearrange the interior, and perhaps attempt to cure the space of this condition through acupuncture and massage. Gas heaters bathe us in warmth, and Cezary’s wall reliefs from recent years complement the spatial scenes like imaginary reliquaries full of repressed memory. The result is a fantastically speculative scenario that, instead of a dark vision of the apocalypse, shows us a strangely soothing and quiet version of nature’s possible future retribution.