HdKVHeidelbergerKunstverein

Jakub Choma: Healing Through Fatigue

Opening Saturday, 01 March, at 6 pm

In his first institutional solo exhibition, the artist Jakub Choma (*1995) transfers elements from digital game worlds into a spatial installation that captivates the audience with its complexly nested layers, hybrid material combinations, and chaotic-artificial character. In doing so, he employs narrative strategies of worldbuilding², transforming the exhibition hall of the Heidelberger Kunstverein into a dungeon³-like terrain that visitors can explore like an open-world level⁴. The title Healing Through Fatigue refers to a motif familiar from gaming, where a character loses vitality upon roaming beyond the prescribed boundaries of the game. However, it is precisely at the point in the game where death by exhaustion looms that Choma, within the context of artistic strategies, sees the potential for self-empowerment. Accordingly, he activates his installations by playing within them. In doing so, he appropriates—almost dance-like—the movements of non-player characters (NPCs), figures controlled by the logic and algorithms of the game world. He also draws on movement patterns that stem from programming errors, known as glitches. A well-known example of this is a character’s endless running against a wall, which even evolved into its own video genre on TikTok.

Choma draws on observations from gaming communities, such as World of Warcraft guilds and digital role-playing forums, to influence and transform the design of his environments. Rather than sticking to superficial references, he delves deeply into the aesthetic codes of quests⁵ and game architectures. Many of these references are found in online discussion forums—platforms like Discord or Twitch—places where knowledge is exchanged and unique subcultures emerge. Here, media content, fan art, and a specific vocabulary are continually reimagined. They not only facilitate the sharing of knowledge but also express a sense of belonging. The communication circulating in vibrant communities condenses into allusions and messages that only insiders familiar with the shared codes can decipher. In his work, Choma takes up these linguistic and visual layers and transfers them into real spaces and physical materials. In doing so, he uses cork, plastic, wood, metal, stickers, textiles, and electronic components, which he then combines with printing processes. This produces hybrid assemblages that he condenses into large-scale installations. These may appear chaotic at first glance, yet they are meticulously calculated down to the finest detail. Cork in particular becomes the central supporting material in Choma’s practice, whose grain and flexible structure he interprets as an analogy to the digital pixel.

The complex layering and mutual interpenetration of digital game worlds and analogue material structures in Choma’s artistic practice refers to current discussions around what is termed Post-Internet. Here, it is not about an end or an aftermath of the internet, but rather about engaging with the idea that the net has spread into every area of life, continues to proliferate there, and can no longer be defined or considered in isolation—much like in Choma’s installations.

At the same time, this understanding points to theories that no longer view the internet as a purely immaterial realm but as an entity deeply embedded in physical and psychological infrastructures—one that, as the artist Hito Steyerl puts it, is “not dead and is everywhere,” thereby rendering the distinction between online and offline experience obsolete⁶. In Choma’s projects, this “undead presence” is reflected in an aesthetic that interweaves playfulness with physical reality and highlights that even physical reality is always infused with digital logics.