Galeria Przypływ » Exhibition Marcin Zawicki ~ MEGAHIT

Marcin Zawicki’s 𝗠𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗛𝗜𝗧 exhibition opens up a space in which paintings and sculptural objects create an environment that is at once seductive and disturbing — a visual ecosystem on the threshold of reality and simulation. It is a project on a spectacular scale, yet deeply rooted in critical reflection on the condition of the contemporary world: the ecological crisis, the twilight of the Anthropocene, and the question of post-human reality.

Zawicki bases his paintings on models - biomorphic, grotesque constructions that combine organic motifs, remnants of pop culture, and objects of ambiguous ontological status. Thus, the canvas does not represent a copy of reality but rather an alternative variant: a painterly simulation of the world after a catastrophe. This method situates the artist’s practice close to the philosophical considerations of Jean Baudrillard, for whom the simulacrum does not refer to any original reality but creates its own order.

𝗠𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗛𝗜𝗧 offers a post-apocalyptic landscape — full of bizarre organisms oscillating between ugliness and grotesque beauty, inhabiting a world devoid of humans. It is a reality dominated by hybrid creatures, objects stripped of function, and fragments of mass culture that have survived as debris. The viewer participates in a ball amid the ruins of their own civilization, and the catastrophe becomes not so much an end as the beginning of another, unpredictable narrative.

Drawing on Timothy Morton’s philosophy - particularly the concepts of “dark ecology” and “hyperobjects” — the exhibition can be read as a reflection on catastrophe stretched across time. The point-like end of the world, the titular 𝗠𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗛𝗜𝗧, is merely the conclusion of a long process of decay, during which humans lose their central place.

Yet 𝗠𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗛𝗜𝗧 goes beyond ecological diagnosis. In the artist’s work, we encounter traces of the “esoterization” of the world — a process that has been gaining momentum since the 1990s and accelerated after the pandemic. Narratives about alternative lifelines, mirror life, and relic hominids become tools for critical analysis of contemporary myths. Zawicki’s paintings and objects are both parody and serious proposition: they reveal how late capitalist produces its own bestiaries and, at the same time, how these can be artistically tamed. The artist engages the viewer through a multi-layered experience: oil painting rooted in the tradition of the Old Masters coexists with sculptural objects and a layer of augmented reality (AR). In this way, he not only addresses radically topical issues but also introduces new ways of participating in culture — between critique and digital experimentation.

Zawicki’s works can be read as attempts at the mimetic domestication of otherness - whether in the form of strange organisms or fragments of culture transformed into autonomous entities. From this perspective, 𝗠𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗛𝗜𝗧 is not merely a dystopian vision but a proposal for another way of seeing: a lesson in living within a world where the human point of reference ceases to be the measure of reality.