Andrzej ŻYGADŁO (b. 1988), Dichotomy, from the series: Every Friday Żygadło, 2020

oil, acrylic, panel; 55 x 80 cm;
Signed, dated and described on the back: 7/52 / WHAT'S FIFTH ZYGADŁO 01. 05. 2020 / DYCHOTOMIA / Andrzej ZYGADŁO.

PROVENENCE:
- private collection, Poland

Andrzej Żygadło realized a series of paintings called Every Friday Żygadło from March 2020 to April 2021, and the works were published on the project's social media page, where one could find the description "For 52 weeks, starting from 20.03.2020 on this page, I will post one piece of my artwork commenting on any topic in any way." In the end, however, considering the project as a whole, the published works mainly illustrated broad socio-political phenomena and events in Poland and around the world happening during the project period.
The featured painting is a metaphor for the Polish-Polish war and includes the following sequence of events: Two workers were commissioned to paint a mural of the Polish flag on a wall. In the course of the work, it turned out that they had different political views symbolized by the colors white and red. One by one, the one holding the red paint began to paint over the white part of the wall and the one holding the white paint began to paint over the area covered with red paint. This led to a physical clash. The fighting representatives of antagonistic political views are shown as wrestlers with heads - symbols taken from Internet meme culture. The first one on the right has the head of a Sundaic Rhino, called "Janusz" in meme culture and a symbol of the stereotypical middle-aged and elderly Pole. The person on the left has the head of "Mr. Wies" (a character from the popular cartoon Blok Ekipa), which is a symbol in meme culture of cunning and deliberate understatement of repair and construction work to the detriment of the principal. The image was intentionally published on the eve of the Republic of Poland's Flag Day.