Paradiso Lussemburgo by Filip Markiewicz

As an access vestibule to Paradiso Lussemburgo, Antichamber condenses the themes of this stacked installation into nineteen drawings: Luxembourg and its provincial life, finance, globalization, icons of power, performance, Fortress Europe. Story-board of Paradiso Lussemburgo. The rug is printed with cinema references: The Shining by Stanley Kubrick and a suspended drum in reference to Volker Schlöndorff’s film The Tin Drum. Fiction vs reality.

PARADISO LUSSEMBURGO FILIP MARKIEWICZ THE EXHIBITION A film projected on three screens, Journey to the Limits of an Identity relates, in a detached manner, the European saga of a Luxembourg  couple on a quest for the absolute. Between Warsaw and Luxembourg. Adam and Eve lost in a new Paradise? Bonnie and Clyde pacified? One character split into two genders? ‘‘Paradise is when the adverts begin’’, says one of the characters in the film.

Luxembourg as a postcard of romantic calm peaceful nature resonates here with other less affable rural landscapes, areas of poverty and socio-economic adversity. The bathtub evokes a mixture of American Beauty by Sam Mendes, Psycho by Hitchcock and The Death of Marat by David, presenting dirty water, contrary to any prospect of purgation. The lyrics ‘‘This is the next century where the universal is free…’’ from the song The Universal by Blur are written on the wall.