You Have a Great Future Ahead of You

• print on banner, 2023

Paweł Czekański’s work is stylistically reminiscent of brochures and posters advertising all sorts of religious organisations, spiritual guides or coaches, i.e. providers of a promise of spiritual cleansing and rejuvenation. The neoliberal idea of individual responsibility for one’s own destiny, and even more so for life’s success, has long since been discredited. However, its echoes still reverberate and affect us, perhaps most directly in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. This part of the continent, an ersatz of the capitalist West, seems to be doomed to endlessly trying to rise to an unsurpassed benchmark. At times of crisis, we are increasingly flooded by pseudo-spiritual contents – after all, this is when the trade in promises of solace and a better future becomes most lucrative.