For the first month of the exhibition ‘Zajęcie’ (Occupation), Karolina Balcer was building a gigantic house made of sugar bricks, a replica of the villa where the patainstitution WYKWIT is based. Objected to thermal radiation, the object gradually changed its form, filling the space with a sweet smell.
The exhibited object Home Sweet Home came into existence for the first time during the opening of the exhibition Debauch House in WYKWIT gallery, a private artistic patainstitution
In a dilapidated villa in Zacisze district in Wroclaw, the same that is the setting for the conceptual experiment LAYERS. The sugar house was being gradually built during the exhibition Zajecie (Occupation), erected brick by brick with sugar cubes formed manually by the artist, until it took the shape of the villa on the Jan Kochanowski Alley where Karolina lives and where the co-created by her WYKWIT gallery functions.
From June 13th the house was being heated and slowly melted, releasing a sweet, caramel smell. The mix of idyllic, homely sweetness fuses with a vision of decay, referring to the symbolic degradation of many historic buildings in Wroclaw (among others, the ‘living ruin’, the palace housing the BWA Wroclaw Awangarda gallery), at the same time wickedly alluding to the ephemeral functioning of WYKWIT, an independent gallery whose existence is not institutionally guaranteed and whose rent is inevitably coming to an end.
The piece was created thanks to the generous support of Südzucker Polska S.A. and many people who joined in the construction.
text: Anna Mituś