Krzysztof Candrowicz,
”Life of Brian” by Monty Python Perfect life - without pain, suffering, wars, conflicts and social tensions - is a Utopia. We will be always constrained by ideology, system or regime, by our own deficiencies, everyday dullness, lack of happiness or stupidity – our or of other people who have an influence on our existence. However, we are able to handle everything. How? The answer is simple – let us turn everything into a joke! Let us laugh at our deficiencies. Our sense of humor is the best way to distance ourselves from the surrounding reality. Just as one of the members of “The Flying Circus of Monty Python” used to say: “If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten, and that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.” The gift to notice absurd is a remedy for every tough situation. Problems which irritate and upset us are easier to deal with when we look at them as if they were just a farce. This way the world seems less serious and all obstacles diminish rapidly. Moreover, the ability to look at the world from an ironic perspective is a perfect opposition to pathos, seriousness and stiffness. The history of art, literature and film is full of parody, grotesque, black comedies and pamphlets which turn our grave reality into a funny story. The exhibition Tickle Attack is an attempt to unveil everything that is „exclusively serious”. Sometimes we have to put on pink glasses and look at the world with a greater sense of humor in order to notice some phenomena. We live in the times in which absurd, caricature and irony work on their own autotelic level. Without understanding what is hidden between the lines everything seems one-dimensional and too literal. Without the ability to decode the hidden meanings and to notice absurd and humor we may misinterpret the intentions of words and pictures. “A serious person” may then see not real but false reality. What is more, there is the risk that everything which is awfully serious may be also awfully boring ;)
Translated by Marta Bartoszek
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