Waterbottles x 8 (1994/2026)  – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

More than thirty years after its first presentation, Robert Rumas’s Waterbottles will once again appear in public space. The work, which became one of the key reference points for Polish critical art in the 1990s, returns as a piece that continues to raise relevant questions about the condition of religiosity — a religiosity that, in its most extreme manifestations, requires the easing of tensions and “comfort”, much like a body warmed by a hot waterbottle. Some works, although they belong to art history, do not age — primarily because the issues they address remain valid.

• The installation consists of large forms made of transparent foil filled with water. Beneath two of them, the artist placed commercially available figurines of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Waterbottles was first presented in 1994 at Długi Targ in Gdańsk, adjacent to Neptune’s Fountain and Artus Court. In 2001, the work was exhibited at the Grand Place in Brussels as part of the exhibition Irreligia. Morphology of the Non-Sacred in Polish Art. Both presentations sparked extensive debate about the presence of religious symbols in shared public space. The current realisation has been prepared with the participation of the artist and is associated with the acquisition of the work for the Collection of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. 

As Robert Rumas stated: “This work was an attempt to touch the living tissue of the city. Upon this tissue of the street, upon the cobblestones, I placed hot water bottles, which are usually used to soothe painful wounds. And between one and the other — sacred figures, the living tissue of religion.” In Waterbottles, as in his other works, Rumas explores the phenomenon of post-secularism, raising questions about the superficiality of faith and the shallowness of attachment to religious symbols. 

• The one-day presentation in front of Ujazdowski Castle provides an opportunity to encounter Robert Rumas and his work once again — a work that from the outset functioned beyond the gallery, in public space, amid social tensions, questions and disputes.