New York and Warsaw–based artist Piotr Uklanski's installations, photography, collages, performances, and films often explore postwar European and American aesthetics and politics, with references including Art Brut—as in his resin paintings with heavy impasto surfaces and woven-fiber painting, part of a 2009 exhibition at Gagosian entitled “Brut”—the red and white of the Polish flag, and hippie culture (as in recent paintings comprising tie-dyed bed sheets with portions of color strategically removed with bleach). His work has sparked intense public reaction. For example, his photographic series “Untitled (The Nazis)” caused protests when exhibited in 1998 and was destroyed in a publicity stunt staged by a celebrated Polish actor while on view in Warsaw in 2000; however, his billboard Untitled (John Pope II) was spontaneously turned into a memorial shrine after the Pope's death in 2005. Interested in the techniques of craft, Uklanski commonly uses inexpensive or vernacular materials in his art.
New York and Warsaw–based artist Piotr Uklanski's installations, photography, collages, performances, and films often explore postwar European and American aesthetics and politics, with references including Art Brut—as in his resin paintings with heavy impasto surfaces and woven-fiber painting, part of a 2009 exhibition at Gagosian entitled “Brut”—the red and white of the Polish flag, and hippie culture (as in recent paintings comprising tie-dyed bed sheets with portions of color strategically removed with bleach). His work has sparked intense public reaction. For example, his photographic series “Untitled (The Nazis)” caused protests when exhibited in 1998 and was destroyed in a publicity stunt staged by a celebrated Polish actor while on view in Warsaw in 2000; however, his billboard Untitled (John Pope II) was spontaneously turned into a memorial shrine after the Pope's death in 2005. Interested in the techniques of craft, Uklanski commonly uses inexpensive or vernacular materials in his art.