Paramount of Eternity is the title of my upcoming solo exhibition at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Texas. The myth of Sisyphus inspired the title, and that is where I would like to begin. As we know from mythology, Sisyphus was a cruel Greek king whose punishment entailed pushing a giant rock up a steep hill, only to find it rolling back down when he neared the top.
That is what we know him for, and that became his legacy: tirelessly pushing the rock till eternity. The theme for the solo exhibition at the Brownsville Museum is about the sense of eternity that we experience during a lifetime. Timelessness is not necessarily a bad thing, but the main contribution to life. It might be as Albert Camus presented.
In his book Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus imagined Sisyphus smiling while pushing the rock, and embracing his situation without thinking of the past or the future. Sisyphus was unstoppable. He pushed the rock back up with unabated determination each time it went down. It makes me think that it’s not necessarily a bad story about a man who struggles with a rock. We cannot control our destiny, but we can control our present, and we do that by always trying to do what is right and what is best. Our attempts may be futile, but making the attempt is never futile, for it determines and simultaneously rewards our character.
Born in Poland in 1984, Bartosz Beda relocated to the UK in 2008.
Beda worked on two movie productions, Ichthis by Marek Skrobecki (2005) and Peter and the Wolf by Suzieh Tempelton (2006), which received the Oscar Prize in 2007. After graduating with a MA in Fine Art in 2011, he was selected for the 2012 Catlin Art Guide as one of the most promising emerging artists in the UK. In 2012, Beda was short-listed for Saatchi New Sensations exhibition in London for most exciting graduate students in the UK, and won the esteemed Towry Award for the Best of North of England, as well as a six-month scholarship to Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, Germany. Beda had solo exhibitions at Galleria Liebre, Spain (2013), BAC Gallery, Colombia (2015), Jackson-Teed, England (2016), Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery, USA (2017), Mildred M. Cox Gallery, USA (2018), Hopkins Art Center, USA (2019), Brownsville Museum, USA (2019); received a fellowship from Fondazione Perl’ Arte in Rome, Italy (2016), three months residency at GoggleWorks, Center for the Arts, USA (2018), and artist in residence at Booker T. Washington (2018-19).