Having returned to his home of Poland after a decade living abroad, Pawel Jaszczuk was surprised at the ubiquity of religious objects in everyday contexts. Jesus had become a pop culture icon: holy Christian images appeared on underwear, as chocolate, as floating bathtub accessories, earrings, lamp-stands, tattoos, sex toys and other mass-produced objects. Capitalism’s relentless usurping of anything and everything does not make exceptions for sacred imagery.

Jaszczuk’s photobook “¥€$U$”, then, aims to document and criticize the excesses of this development, of the grotesque marriage between holy symbols and the money-making drive, and asks: is religion’s way of staying up-to-date?

“Jesus and ¥€$U$. What is the difference here? The simple answer is: everything. Nowadays, Jesus is more a symbolic religious figure than he is a real person. From a cultural point of view he might be considered as a metaphorical figure – the personification of all virtues, the master figure. ¥ € $ U $ is an aberration of a religious order.”

Artist Profile

Pawel JASZCZUK

Paweł Jaszczuk was born in 1978, Warsaw, Poland.
Graduated from School of Visual Arts, Sydney in 2004.
After being in Australia and Japan for over a decade, he moved back to Poland in 2012 and is currently based in Warsaw.

Gallery Exhibitions