The Ambivalence of Objects: In the Studio with Cezary Poniatowski

On the heels of his solo show, Pharmakon at Wschód gallery, Polish artist Cezary Poniatowski speaks with Something Curated’s Keshav Anand about the uncanny pull of his new works and what it’s like working as an artist in Warsaw today. His recent reliefs, stitched together from carpets and bits of domestic hardware, carry a quiet tension, as if they’re holding something they can’t quite release. Poniatowski draws on the idea of the pharmakon, an unstable substance that is at once cure and toxin. The pharmakon becomes a way for him to think about memory, and how it can can soothe and unsettle at the same time. The photographs that accompany this conversation show glimpses of the world these pieces come from, but the ideas driving them reach far beyond material process. They touch on Poland’s shifting sense of itself, on the ambiguity built into the objects we live with, and on the uneasy space between care and harm that Poniatowski continues to explore.

Keshav Anand: Pharmakon is such a layered concept – I wonder if you could expand on it? What first interested you in this idea, and how did it begin to take shape as the backbone of your exhibition at Wschód?

Cezary Poniatowski: I became interested in this ancient concept by Plato some time ago, when I realised how much my practice stems from an ambivalent attitude towards objects taken from the domestic environment. A pharmakon is understood as a substance that is both a poison and a remedy. Originally, Plato used the term in relation to the invention of writing; in his view, it began to damage the power of memory.

This sexy ambiguity of a pharmakon led me to look at my works as remnants of “the past that cannot become the past.” I try to use a narrative oscillating between a parable and poetry. The form of the works is both harsh and elegant at the same time. They are handcrafted, jewellery-like items assembled in a quasi-alchemical way. These artefacts suggest performing an easy, everyday function (like household utensils or first-aid kits), as well as being objects of religious celebration. For some time now, I have considered “the air” an important ingredient of these sewn-up relief works. This sensation of ambivalence led me to regard “the air” as the title pharmakon: a spectral substance imprisoned inside my works. The works themselves perform the function of filtering the air as it circulates through them. But it is not clear whether these “filters” purify or contaminate it.

KA: Many of your works elicit a sensation of unease. They feel protective but also suffocating. What draws you to materials like carpets and ventilation parts? Are you thinking mainly about the physical sensation they create, or is it something else that attracts you to them?

CP: I regard carpets as embodiments of the hearth, cosiness, and the familiarity of everyday life. Metaphorically, they also serve as carriers of the past, of history, personified witnesses to what has transpired, silent companions to our lives, ever-present in the background yet always before our eyes. A carpet acts as a filter of our existence when we think of it in terms of the physical world. It accumulates dust, dirt, traces of our activity, signs of use, and scents. When rolled up, it takes on an organic shape, a kind of mass with human proportions.

The character of carpet material is very haptic. After conversations with friends or visitors to my exhibitions, I realised that we share a specific intimate relationship with carpets from our childhood: playing on them, remembering their shapes and colours, treating them as maps for small figures and toys. I feel that the use of carpet as a material in my works refers to this visceral version of collective memory.

The carpets I use are mostly second-hand, originating from the socialist era in Eastern Europe, the “grandma-like” ones. Their individual story isn’t important data for me when using them. When I work on new pieces, I treat the carpets as “meat,” as a substance. I prefer the associations that their shape or function evokes. I’m more interested in their economic and geographical genesis. I take them from where they are.

There’s a funny and important quote about a carpet in The Big Lebowski that keeps cruising through my mind. The Dude, the protagonist, has been searching for his “stolen” rug because “that rug really tied the room together.” The quest for this item drives the film’s narrative. I consider the carpet in my practice to function as a kind of MacGuffin object.

KA: You often invert materials, showing their reverse side or hiding a structure inside something hollow. What does that act of turning things inside out mean to you?

CP: The works usually don’t have an inner structure. They hold together with stitches made of zip ties or regular screws that secure parts of the façade of the artwork. They are empty inside, with the reverse side of the carpet facing outward. Their sides and backs are also sewn up. That’s why I sometimes present them hanging in space on chains or ropes. The familiar obverse remains hidden, enclosed within the work. I want this choice to create a feeling of claustrophobia or inwardness, a slightly distorted perspective. The inside of the work becomes this imaginary, pocket-like space, almost as if it’s trapped inside the carpet. The reliefs have these strange, suggestive shapes, bulges, folds, and hollows that feel a bit like gargoyles or fragments of architecture. They invite you to experience them almost through multiple senses at once.

I usually cut the carpet parts into specific shapes (a carpet, surprisingly, seems to be both very stiff and very soft, depending on how you fold it), prepare many of them, and build the whole object by attaching them one by one. In most cases, there is only a blurry vision or feeling of how the final work will look, so I like to say that these kinds of reliefs crystallise in a painterly manner.

KA: You’ve spoken before about memory as something both “life-giving” and “parasitic.” When you were making the works for Pharmakon, were there particular memories, personal or collective, that you felt were resurfacing or mutating in the process?

CP: Sure. I have many personal memories connected with my family home and various utensils or items that stayed deeply in my mind. But I think there’s one broad reference that encompasses many memories, both personal and collective: the political and economic transformation of the early ’90s in Eastern Europe.

I grew up right in the middle of the collapse of socialism and the shift towards democracy and a free market. That whole transformation really shaped my adolescence. At first, there was this soothing sense of relief, like we were finally leaving the painful past behind. But that feeling was soon replaced by culture wars and the resentments of a broken society. I still think one of the biggest issues, back then and even today, is this sense of being uprooted, people searching blindly for a new kind of identity. On the other hand, Poland’s economy has thrived since then, and the progress has been huge – but at the same time, people seem tormented, paradoxically more alienated than ever before.

I try to look at that time through both a material and spiritual lens, like an existential investigation into the culture that surrounded the transformation. And today, more than ever, we’re seeing nostalgia and retrotopia come back with this ghostly intensity, consuming everything around them. There’s also this growing sense of neotribalism in modern societies, which isn’t exactly healthy from a community point of view. But at the same time, when I think about the raw, almost visceral energy behind it, I can’t help but find it inspiring.

KA: Your earlier works had a strong graphic quality, with those sharp black-and-white forms. I’m curious if you feel your reliefs and installations are an extension of drawing in some way?

CP: Definitely. My practice really grew out of printmaking, which is very closely connected to drawing. In the beginning, I had the chance to learn a lot of traditional printmaking techniques. The results were usually quite rough, partly because of the tools I was using, and partly because I’ve always had a certain stiffness in my wrist since I was a kid. At some point, I decided to just accept that physical limitation and treat it as something that could work in my favour. Looking back, that decision really shaped a lot of what I do.

The installations, site-specific works, and wall reliefs all grew naturally out of that process, from printmaking, through a few years of very reduced, monochromatic painting, into something more three-dimensional. I like that this evolution happened in such an organic way. I think I was always, maybe subconsciously, trying to move my work closer to theatre or film, to something more spatial and immersive. Working with objects and site-specific pieces puts me a bit closer to the way a director thinks.

KA: Nietzsche and Freud are mentioned as touchpoints in the press release for the show. Have any particular texts, philosophical or otherwise, been informing your thinking lately?

CP: There’s a wonderful theoretical book by Jean Baudrillard that has helped me to crystallise my thinking about objects and space lately, The System of Objects. Another one is Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past by Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, which explores architecture, domesticity, and our understanding of materiality. I also enjoyed the essays on film and culture by Mark Fisher.

From fiction, I recently read a book by a major Polish sci-fi writer from the mid-20th century, Stanisław Lem, The Invincible. The plot revolves around a phenomenon called “necroevolution”: a form of life–non-life, mechanical, unconscious, and indestructible.

KA: Changing pace for a moment, what’s it like working in Warsaw now? Is the city feeding you creatively?

CP: I’ve had this love–hate thing with the city for as long as I can remember. But after finding a second place on the island of Crete, something shifted. Suddenly Warsaw started to feel lighter, more alive, somehow. There’s this energy here now, a kind of quiet optimism, like everyone’s building something. I’ve learned to lean into that. The city gives me focus, but it never lets me settle, and I think I need that tension.

KA: Talking of feeding, if someone were visiting Warsaw for the first time, where would you take them to eat?

CP: I think I would pick one from these: Ale Wino, Bibenda, Między Nami. And there’s this old bistro called Maska in my neighbourhood. I love their pierogis.

KA: And what are you currently listening to in your studio?

CP: Bohren & der Club of Gore, Stars of the Lid, William Basinski, Richard Chartier, Wojciech Kilar.



Feature image: Photography by Bartek Zalewski. Courtesy of the artist and Wschód, Warsaw.