Ernest Wińczyk spends every tenth part of the year on the Spanish island of La Palma. This time he took several amulets from Melancholia, and sent us a series of photo postcards from there. The time spent on the island is a knowingly designed counterpoint to the imposed way of living, the networks of social and professional responsibilities and the accelerated pace of everyday life. It is a time that is free from briefs, mood boards and deadlines, but also from intensive meetings with people. It is a period of meditative self-isolation which makes it possible to find again the untroubled original perspective that scrutinises the nearest surroundings with spontaneous sensitivity.

A vast landscape, local artefacts and rare micro events – it would seem that everything is different, almost surreal. In such context, a new language becomes distinct, as well as new images – emotional and dream-like, reflecting the shift of the senses, which also operate on a different basis. Nevertheless, the connection line with the place from which you come is not interrupted – the postcards sent, small items taken on a trip demonstrate that the other world exists tangibly within easy reach. In fact, a peculiar dialectics is inscribed in the state of self-isolation: being with yourself alone is an exceptional state, correlated with being together.

The desire of being together becomes a reverse of voluntary solitude. As the author admits himself: Each of us has a very strong need to be together but at the same time a very strong need to be isolated, free and independent. These are the two needs existing in us and they repel each other like a magnet.