THE GUINEA PIG CLUB

A series of works made in various techniques / 2017

The Guine Pig Club is a set of works consisting of paintings, objects, collages and one film. The heroes of the series are former pilots of Allied fighter planes from the period of World War II, who were victims of air crashes and suffered severe facial crashes suffered severe facial deformities. They all underwent experimental surgeries that contributed to the development of plastic surgery. The mutilated faces presented in the works meet cubist deconstruction. The thing treats of form, its loss and the processes of repair and reconstruction. Humor and comedy are intertwined here with feelings of aversion and anxiety.

(Pilots) were victims of plane crashes which massacred their faces. Although all of them underwent plastic surgeries, an imperfect technology of the 1940s caused their deformed countenances to be situated somewhere between entirely human and having an appearance of a Doctor Frankenstein’s creation. Despite the fact, they maintained their sense of humour and established the Guinea Pigs’ or Experimental Rabbits’ Club, to use a Polish equivalent. If the event had taken place 30 years later, they could have called themselves residents of the uncanny valley. (…_ Works (…) present a number of different variations on the theme of human images, interrogating reasons for and a scale of deformations they are subjected to by art.

from Lukasz Bialkowski’s curatorial text for The Uncanny Valley exhibition

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