GHOST IN THE SHELL

Ghost in the Shell

Paweł Kalinowski reveals his latest art car at Poland’s Hel Riders festival.

A few weeks ago at Hel Riders, the Hel peninsula on Poland’s north coast played host once again to central Europe’s Porsche community in one of the best summer annuals on the calendar.

Paweł Kalinowski, owner of CarBone down in Łódź, is one of the community’s most prominent faces, and the car he brought this year is a little different.

The Porsche 356 shell at the centre of his “Ghost Layer of Shinjuku” art car is not strictly the subject of the work, but more a vessel for storytelling, locking away the memories of a life it might have had rallying through 1960s Japan before it decayed to the state you see it in now.

Earlier this year Kalinowski first explored the energy of Japan’s night-time car culture with his Shinjuku art car, the predecessor of this piece. Ghost Layer feels like its counterpart: less concerned with what the journey entails, and more in what remains after it’s over.

What drew him to the project was the contrast between a machine once associated with freedom, movement and adventure, and the silent shell that remains today. Rather than restoring the car, Kalinowski felt compelled to celebrate it as an archaeological object carrying traces of time and human experience.

The Porsche 356 shell at the centre of his “Ghost Layer of Shinjuku” art car is not strictly the subject of the work, but more a vessel for storytelling...

It is as though a whole novel was written into metal and sculpture, telling a tell only for those with the eyes to read it.

Hidden throughout the installation are eleven handwritten notes and eleven corresponding artefacts, including rust, ash, family photographs and fragments of maps. Some details only emerge under ultraviolet light, revealing fragments of a fictional story centred on a Japanese amateur rally driver navigating family expectations, sacrifice and the personal cost of pursuing a passion.

It is as though a whole novel was written into metal and sculpture, telling a tell only for those with the eyes to read it.