Marcin Dudek, Game Time Choices II, 2023, steel, aluminium, oil paint, copper, medical tape, wood, offset print, fibreglass, 145 x 97 cm
Marcin Dudek explores themes related to the politics of identity, social structures, and human experiences, often working from football fan cultures as a point of departure. In his multidisciplinary practice, he draws inspiration from his life in Poland, where he witnessed the transformation of society as it transitioned from communism to capitalism. Game Time Choices is a reflection on labour, and on Dudek’s longstanding interest in reconciliation. Informed by moments of collision—between past and present, old and new, the spectacle and the imperceptible, permanent and temporary—his works are a means to locate a sense of stability amid the vulnerability of emotion, memory, and fallibility. Yeo Workshop presents a new body of work by the artist, which extends his recent research into the narratives of the FIFA World Cup and the migrant workers underpinning this global spectacle.
Game Time Choices, the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, is shaped around a central installation, Tent (2022). This inverted tent-like structure alludes to football stadiums, and to the numerous hands that have built these architectural monuments, particularly those involved with the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. It questions the national prestige surrounding this global affair, which is simultaneously celebrated and criticised for its idolatry and excessiveness. The second-hand uniforms used to construct the tent embody a multitude of meanings and connotations which range from the personal to the universal. The textiles are at once traces of history, affectations of their former wearer(s), victims of the disposability of the clothing industry, and stories of ‘survival against the odds’. Dudek has transferred images onto the surface of the fabrics: strong, calloused hands; the skull-like figure of the 2022 trophy; distorted faces of industry leaders and decision-makers. The work emerges from a wooden box, which forms both the base of the sculpture and its transport vessel. Such a crate is reminiscent of a suitcase, the small capsule of existence a migrant worker holds onto as they drift from one construction site to another; the workers, like the clothes, struggle to exist within a world which uses them then casts them aside.
Venue: Yeo Workshop, 47 Malan Road, #01-25 Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109444
When: 7 Oct - 19 Nov 2023,
By: Yeo Workshop
