Jerzy Goliszewski’s exhibition entitled Rockets to Nowhere is a story about the universe, about this endless space that arouses fear and nostalgia at the same time. It is about longing generated by the vision of the future and countering other planets that have not been realized yet.

The artist refers to the whole spectrum of ‘cosmic’ aesthetics, from Stanley Kubrick’s movies, to pop comic strips about intergalactic heroes, reflecting upon the echoes of the Cold War and Arms Race. The very title has been borrowed from one of the books written by Lester Del Rey, who was the author and publisher of popular science fiction titles in the nineteen fifties in the USA.

Goliszewski’s sculptures – extremely minimalist and subject to some kind of designer discipline – evoke memories of the times in which people still believed that progress could be planned, designed, and controlled. Today we know that the world is not black and white, just like exhibited works, that the exploration of outer space is no longer the key propriety for competing superpowers, while contemporary pop culture reveals the rather dark side of most superheroes. At the same time, this melancholic and escapist overtone of unfulfilled ‘space odyssey’ echoes in today’s culture. But now we are wondering not if we will conquer extra-terrestrial territories, but whether we will find a refuge having to leave the Earth destroyed with our own hands.