“Problems of the first world, life before death”.  Exhibition curator, Stach Szabłowski.The Stefan Gierowski  Foundation. Group exchibition | 2019 |

First World problems provide a subject for memes. Internet users ridicule the unbearable lightness of anxieties which arise when there are not really serious problems. Nobody is starving to death. Nobody is suffering violence. Life can only be threatened by death, which however, is postponed for an indefinite future. In the First World you live until death.
For us, First World Problems became the title of an exhibition, both of and on painting. Painting is one of the problems of the First World. Although an essentially primeval discipline, it is also, at the same time, exceptionally advanced in respect of the development of its own language, and ensnared in a web of contexts of its history. The opportunity to deal with subtle inventions of contemporary painting constitutes a privilege: social, cultural, and obviously economic. Painting seems an unquestionable emblem of one’s status and an undisputed chief asset in a market game. Therefore, let’s not challenge it and let’s rather ask if paining, as one of the “First World problems”, can depict these problems? Can it make them visible?

Stach Szabłowski