one armed bandit
one armed bandit (2019) solo exhibition at Punkt Odbioru Sztuki in Łódź, Poland
The shady atmosphere of game rooms, unbearable tension, nervous behavior of regulars, shaking hands - let's go out on a limb. Will we win this time or will we come home again with empty pockets and disgust after a stunning night? You will have to help yourself, it may disappear for a few days. Somehow you have to deal with failure. Or maybe this time three cherries in a row will bring us happiness?
The solo exhibition by Nadia Markiewicz in the Punkt Odbioru Sztuki gallery is an attempt to play with aesthetic. The desire to evoke the atmosphere of arcades, or rather an attempt to imagine what is hidden behind the mysterious windows, covered with black foil. What feelings accompany people who go there? Absorbed in the game, wanting to profit, they know for sure or are they only guessing that it's the middle of the day or the middle of the night?
It is irrelevant, here everything is blurred, awareness, sense of time, reality. One armed bandit exhibition, beyond of the visual layer, is also a carrier of many autobiographical topics, it is a thoroughly personal exhibition, characterized by its own experiences and attempts to face its own limitations, both physical and mental. The works comment on the topics very seriously and with a grain of salt at the same time. And suddenly we do not know again if it is so serious whether we got trickily caught.
text and curation Magda Milewska
photos by Maciej Łuczak