After Christmas Forever

An artificial Christmas tree – a product manufactured on a large scale – is standing on a newspaper. At the bottom, around the stand, we can see a vast pile of conifer needles, while the tree itself has thinned-out branches that have but a few needles left. The humorous nature of this project (as the falling of needles is a problem common to all natural Christmas trees) has been narrowed down to something seemingly impossible. However, the title (After Christmas Forever) relates the manipulated object not to a one-time joke, but to a diagnosis: a permanently post-Christmas situation that we are all part of. As if it weren’t aesthetically dubious, the situation requires quick decisions, concerning cleaning up and changing scenery. So, will there be any other Christmas? The work is more likely to pose questions and the diagnosis made by the artist has the hallmarks of the end and exhaustion. One may try and find references that the artist made to a particular situation, by analysing the function of the object in national rites and religious rituals and by pondering on the nature of the historical time in which the project was created, or on the context of his artistic work. By distancing oneself from the afore-mentioned basic clues, one can also perceive the object as a mockery of environmental art and bio art. [A. Markowska]