The works in the exhibition are painted on a mirror film, which allows the viewer to become involved in the plot through the reflection, to merge with the painting and become part of it for a short time. The reflective surface, often used in architecture (building facades and decoration) as well as in aviation, prompted the artist to look back to the 1927 German film Metropolis by Fritz Lang. The film drew visions of the present day through the image of a futuristic city inspired by Art Deco and rapid technological change (the director was looking almost a century ahead at the time). The film's plot may contain issues of current relevance, such as social inequality, the contrast between poverty and the good life, hints of artificial intelligence, robotization, but it is also important to note that the majestic and monumental Metropolis, which in the film symbolises the city's prospects for the future, did not help to consolidate the Art Deco architectural style of splendour and luxury. In the exhibition "The Absence of the Present", the artist explores the relationship between the present, the failures of the past and the expectations of the future, using both concrete images and the technique of representation itself as a reference to other cultural texts and contexts. Here, a society living in a turbulent time becomes important, reflecting its distrust of the present and its urge to escape - a distraction between nostalgia and hope. The present tense seems to be improbable, abstract, creating a veil of illusion that mitigates the inner confusion, perhaps because the present is aligned with the artificial. After all, in a world saturated with visual noise, where the tangible often attempts to obscure the intangible, ephemeral, not always recognisable silhouettes are always emerging, tempting the present to embrace the unknown.