Piotr Uklański - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 13, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    I want to be all of the following: a modernist, a post-minimalist, a popconceptualist, a photographer, a dilettante, a painter’s muse, a political artist like Boltanski, and a filmmaker like Roman Polanski. Piotr Uklanski from “A Conversation: Uklanski / Cattelan,” Flash Art, 2008
    Piotr Uklanski’s ample body of work encompasses painting, sculpture, collage, photography, video and performance. Defiantly subverting the line between diverse media, the Polish born, NewYork-based artist has extensively drawn on a wide range of fields such as history, pop culture and cinema to investigate his ongoing preoccupations with cultural authenticity, stereotyping and identity. Amongst his key works are the notoriously provocative one hundred and sixty stills assembled from cinematic representations of fascist soldiers and generals, included in the artist’s series The Nazis. Uklanski has also realized stock-like photographs of flowers, sunsets, mountains and city lights and, more recently, produced the film Summer Love, lauded as the first polishWestern. For the present lot, Uklanski reveals his unique ability to imbue the banal with an unexpectedly magical quality. Untitled (Agnes), executed in 2002, is entirely fashioned out of crayon shavings, as if held together by static electricity.The composition blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, as the picture plane is transformed into a brightly textured, kaleidoscopic blanket of paper-thin slivers of color. Uklanski has charged the work with a uniquely vibrant and sculptural quality through the single gesture of manipulating a commonplace material. Conventionally dismissed as the trivial, flimsy aftermath of art practice, here the crayon shavings become worthy of artistic display. In their multitude, they seem to quiver with unreserved energy, gaining an alluring presence.The simple yet powerful transformation creates an instance of dazzling beauty. Uklanski’s ingenuity lies in exploring the relationship between the ordinary and the art experience.

54

Untitled (Agnes)

2002

Crayon shavings and Plexiglas in artist’s padauk frame.

35 x 45 in. (88.9 x 114.3 cm).

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist

Estimate
$70,000 - 90,000 

Sold for $81,700

Contemporary Art Part I

13 Nov 2008, 7pm
New York