Piotr Uklański
Piotr Uklański is among those art world figures who assume various roles and work in various genres, often seeming veritably chameleon-like in their exploitation of differing media and alienation effects. One medium that the artist has explored consistently over multiple decades is photography, with all of its potentials and ramifications. This endeavor came to a head in the book project “The Joy of Photography,” named after the Eastman Kodak handbook for amateur photographers that helped multiple generations master the techniques necessary for the putatively perfect (or beautiful) shot. In 2007,
after ten years of working on this project, the practices advocated in the Kodak manual had become obsolete due to the widespread use of digital photography, which called into question the very relevance of photography as such. The 50 photographs in the book manifest colorful extremes, thereby playing with the notion of abstraction. Uklański is known for addressing controversial topics such as the representation of Nazi Germany. In 1999, his exhibition “The Nazis” at The Photographer’s Gallery in London was ransacked and forced to close prematurely due to its color portraits of international and Polish actors playing fetishized Nazis in Hollywood-style settings. As with many of his projects, the ultimate outcome was an artist’s book. Uklańsi’s works seem to focus on photography’s pleasing and seductive aspects, which often supersede the actual content matter. In 2015, the Metropolitan Museum of Art focused on the photographic practice of this Warsaw- and New-York based artist with the exhibition “Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklański Photographs,” which was accompanied by the exhibition “Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklański Selects from the Met Collection.” Alongside the display of his own photographic oeuvre, the artist had selected works from various museum collections to go with his own themes of life and death, erotica and masquerade. For his participation at documenta 14 in 2017, Uklański worked on the project and photo book entitled “Real Nazis.” Here, fact and fiction were juxtaposed—with the artist culling photos from various archives to create his own horror cabinet. The book was done in the same format and mode of production as its predecessor, tantamount to a twin brother of the previously portrayed evil. A recurring topic that the artist addressed once again with this work was the seductiveness of photography in Nazi Germany, as seen in works by Leni Riefenstahl or in that regime’s inclination towards homoerotic imagery. His attempt to disturb, churn up, and confuse viewers is one of two strategies in play, here, the other being to hint at recurring tendencies in contemporary political endeavors. W.S.
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