Piotr UKLAŃSKI (b. 1968 Warsaw), Untitled (Blood Meridian), 2012

ink, gesso, canvas; 122 x 175 cm;
On the reverse:
- ''UNTITLED (BLOOD MERIDIAN)'' signed, dated and author's inscription on the rafter: [mounting mark]'UNTITLED (BLOOD MERIDIAN)'. 2012 P.U.;
-gallery sticker Massimo De Carlo, Milan
-auction sticker
-binder of shipping company, Hong Kong

Provenance:
private collection, Poland

Between 2008 and 2014, Piotr Uklański pursued a series of paintings whose leitmotif was blood, initially alluding to martyrdom in defense of the homeland (hence, for example, the theme of the Warsaw Uprising, commemorated by the artist). National identity, just in 2008, was also the main theme of the artist's exhibition in New York, and works from the series exhibited at Dallas Contemporary in Texas. All of these compositions are united by both the subject matter (understood in two ways: biologically and symbolically) and the execution technique used, which is mainly ink and gesso. Over the course of the series, the artist freely expanded the use of the chosen motif (just as he more than once freely spilled paint on his canvases), and, by closing the national theme, shifted the interpretive weight to the issue of passing time. Here he corresponded clearly with the work of Roman Opalka. The next stage was references to war themes in the context of the works of Rothko or the Gutai Group. In this approach, issues of aggression and the resulting trauma came to the fore.
Blood as a carrier of life, but also a sign of impending death, in the artist's paintings usually takes two forms: as a collection densely filled with stains of more or less regular shapes and varying degrees of density, or a widely spilled layer of paint loosely flowing over the plane of the object. This rather minimalist, limited in form approach to the matter of the painting, however, deepens the need to interpret the work. The offered composition has great artistic and collecting potential. It represents one of the artist's best-known series, and its lapidary form, despite the seriousness of the symbol, has a great deal of decorativeness.
The year 2012, from which the object comes, was marked, among other things, by Uklański's first cross-sectional exhibition "Forty and Four" in Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery. The artist presented, for example, the provocative series "Polish Neo-avant-garde." Three years later there was a significant exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York entitled "Fatal Attraction."
Uklański has used controversy and various means of expression (performance, video, photography) more than once in his art. He continues to explore the themes of popular culture and experiments with the definition of kitsch, but he is also unfamiliar with landscape or portrait themes.