Artists

Mariola Przyjemska, Jakub Żwirełło, Karolina Konopka, Alicja Kozłowska, Dorota Buczkowska, Aleksandra Kanarek, Magdalena Beyer

Press release

The title of the exhibition is drawn from a historic sign mounted on the façade of a tenement building at the entrance to the Museum of Pharmacy in Warsaw. Today, this juxtaposition may appear ambiguous, even internally contradictory. In fact, however, it reveals historically grounded connections between medicinal, toxic, and intoxicating substances—present both in medical practices and in cultural, economic, and political orders. The history of these substances unfolds in parallel with the history of civilization—across centers and peripheries, at the intersection of the West and the Orient. The exhibition proceeds from the assumption that medicines, poisons, and drugs do not constitute separate categories, but rather form a fluid spectrum in which the meaning of a substance shifts depending on the context of use, systems of power, and dominant social narratives. The narrative of the entanglement of healing, intoxication, and poisoning opens with the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860)—a moment when psychoactive substances became tools of imperial violence and economic control. The attempt to open the Chinese market to the opium trade by British colonial interests led to mass addiction and a profound social crisis. At the same time, it revealed that substances can function as geopolitical instruments—serving both domination and destabilization. Contemporary tensions along the East–West axis in many ways repeat this pattern. In U.S. public discourse, responsibility for the opioid crisis is often attributed to China as a supplier of chemical precursors. Much less frequently addressed is the role of Western pharmaceutical corporations in the production and distribution of substances leading to addiction. The circulation of medicines, poisons, and drugs thus reveals not only market mechanisms, but also asymmetries of power and responsibility. The exhibition proposes a non-orthodox division into three parts, corresponding to the categories contained in the historical sign. Each of them examines how the same substances can function simultaneously as a means of healing, an instrument of poisoning, or a medium of intoxication—depending on context, dosage, and mode of use. The first level of the exhibition focuses on narcotic and hypnotic effects—inducing states of relief, intoxication, or temporary detachment from reality, yet not necessarily linked to healing. This category includes both psychoactive substances such as alcohol, and materials operating on the threshold between utility and addiction, such as gasoline or sugar. In this section, references to late consumer culture and practices described as supply-chain art gain particular significance. In Jakub Żwirełło's Nothing Keep (2025), a gasoline canister made of beeswax and amber dust reveals the material and symbolic infrastructures of energy and its economic circulation. Mariola Przyjemska's photographic series Alkohole (1999–2003), in turn, presents luxury brands as seductive objects—promising transcendence while remaining embedded in mechanisms of addiction and escapism. An important thread in this section is also formed by works addressing sugar—a substance both ubiquitous and socially accepted, yet addictive and potentially destructive. In the works of Karolina Konopka and Alicja Kozłowska, sweets and processed snacks become emblems of capitalist pleasure and a "sugar high" that masks its own consequences. The two remaining aspects of the effects of substances—the medicinal and the lethal—are framed as a spectrum stretched between life and death: between the decision to sustain physical existence and the possibility of bringing it to an end. The work by Dorota Buczkowska is a recording of the ECGs of two individuals—the artist and her partner—captured during orgasm. Stimulating as well as soothing substances appear here in a physiological, hormonal dimension. The porcelain painterly objects by Aleksandra Kanarek depict biological forms in which the boundaries between healing, poisoning, and intoxication become blurred. Microscopic structures take on shapes reminiscent of cosmic icons—biology is transformed here into a process of transition from materiality to a hallucinatory vision. Magdalena Beyer's work Substance, in turn, is a variation on perfume—olfactory formulas that contain something of an alchemical and magical process, in which diverse, often seemingly canceling essences ultimately create a harmonious and hypnotic whole.