Still Life

“Still Life” is one of the sculptures at the Halb/Pół exhibition presented by me at the Kunstlerhouse Bethanien in Berlin. The idea behind that solo project was to gather all the works in only one half of gallery space, leaving the other half empty. However this concept didn’t bring the expected result, in fact I see this experiment as a failure. But some of the works form the exhibition were good, among them “Still Life”.

I placed a few fruits on a completely corroded iron easel and I let them rot. A large colony of fruit flies formed on them, serving in turn as a nourishment for several species of spiders placed by me on this structure. I put all of that under a clear foil tent, isolating the flies and the spiders from the outside world.

After two weeks of such coexistence, the spiders settled on the easel, decorating it with a peculiar drawing of spider webs. All this coexisted for a moment, completing the image of abandonment and of something coming to an end.

Photo by Marcus Stein