Go to Heaven

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
Novalis

Between 2008 and 2009, I created a graphic cycle devoted to Space, comprised of ten artworks. All of them were made using the intaglio techniques: etching, aquatint, drypoint, vernis mou, and photo-aquatint.

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The childhood dreams of long journeys, finger-drawing on the starlit sky, and a disassembled telescope were the first symptoms of my future creative interests and fascinations. In 2008–2011, my art took on many different forms, but it continued to revolve around the theme of the sky and humanity. 

The very title of my graphic cycle – Go to Heaven – is supposed to express human persistence in pursuing the dream of finding the land of happiness. In an attempt to humanise the Universe, humankind brings the whole luggage of its experiences, habits, and burdens on the trip into Space. But despite all the lofty goals, humans will never be able to let go of their own humanity. Hung in a limbo of obscure phenomena, in the vacuum of their own loneliness, human beings will relive the drama of self-knowledge over and over again. Technological triumphs, Space expansion, the thrust of new knowledge, new experiences, and the stunning progress instead of calming down will raise the ethical problems of one’s own responsibility even higher as well as multiply the theological questions. The closer humankind gets to realising its dreams, the more it knows about the surrounding world, the bigger the anxiety with which it looks inside itself, inside self-knowledge.

From this position I argue with the common stereotype of Space as a promised land. I distance myself from the human race, I point out its naivety, false heroism, and self-admiration. I show the discord between the perfect human dream and the imperfect reality. 

In my art, Space becomes a promised land of war.