The Decay­ing Stars by Pat­rik Wallner

Pula / Bowling space / 24 / 9 / 2022 / Exhibition

Pat­rik Wall­ner has now been doc­u­ment­ing skate­board­ing in the least expec­ted regions of the globe for well over a dec­ade with a crew work­ing on pro­jects labeled under the Visu­al­trav­el­ing umbrella. 10,000 kilo­met­ers, released in 2010, was their first full-length filmed and fea­tured skate­boarders on a jour­ney from Moscow to Hong Kong solely via the Trans­iberi­an rail­way, get­ting acquain­ted on the way with the unique archi­tec­ture in cit­ies in Rus­sia, Siber­ia, Mon­go­lia and China; since then, new­er pro­jects have focused on South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka), Cent­ral Asia (China, Kaza­kh­stan, Kyrgyz­stan, Uzbek­istan, Afgh­anistan), North India (Alla­habad, New Del­hi), the Euras­i­an pen­in­sula, but also more famil­i­ar des­tin­a­tions such as Japan and Russia.
Patrik’s new show The Decay­ing Stars a mixed media exhib­i­tion includ­ing black and white ana­log pho­to­graphy & fol­ded bank­notes (Paper trails) essen­tially is one more exten­sion of this gen­er­al doc­u­ment­ary effort into dif­fer­ent medi­um, con­sist­ing in the res­ult of the col­lec­tion, cur­a­tion and fusion of most every country’s bank­notes to the visu­al rhythm of iden­ti­fied pat­terns, arranged to the point of a new sin­gu­lar­ity. To Trans­World SKATE­board­ing Magazine, Pat­rik explains:

With the digit­al age rap­idly approach­ing, mak­ing bank­notes obsol­ete, I have turned my ulti­mate souven­ir-hoard­ing of cur­ren­cies into a mul­ti­fa­ceted art pro­ject cre­at­ing motifs and pat­terns to please the eyes. I am donat­ing half of the pro­ceeds to Skate­board­ing N.G.O’s such as Salad Days, Push­ing Myan­mar, Make Life Skate Life and Cuba Skate which build skate­parks and provide skate­boards and edu­ca­tion to skate com­munit­ies in harder to reach areas of this planet.

After some ini­tial dis­plays in Hong Kong and New York City, it is with great pleas­ure that we can announce Vladi­mir 2022 will be host­ing the first ever exhib­i­tion of Paper trails in Europe. Pat­rik also will be show­ing a short doc­u­ment­ary film about skate­board­ing in Cuba, and skate­board­ing N.G.O. Cuba Skate. For more info, please feel free to refer to Filip’s inter­view with Pat­rik, some­where amidst those pages; and either way, see you at the bowling.