Berlin Art@Site www.artatsite.com Piotr Uklanski Untitled (Fist)
Artist:

Piotr Uklanski

Title:

Untitled, Fist

Year:
2007
Adress:
Potsdamer Strasse 50
Website:
Is this relevant?
This fist makes me think of a particular social movement in a specific period in the past. This period is over but this artwork is still here.
Is this artwork both now and in the future still relevant?
This fist embodies self-confidence, power, creative or destructive energy. With a fist a call is made for singlehandedly action, underhand, hard-handed performance.
This is quickly associated with civil resistance against the ruler. Then this can mean that the ‘average men’ are fighting for their own rights against the incumbent government. This could happen because of injustice that took too long or that belief is created.
Once again I ask the question: is this fist relevant?
I think that the opinions vary greatly on the social situation of the poor and weak members.
Another question could also be: is it still relevant for an artist to make a fist? I think so. I am a strong supporter of art that provides insight and supports the advocating for and obtaining the rights for equal and fair treatment.
By Theo, www.artatsite.com

Vertaling
Is dit relevant?
Deze vuist doet denken aan een specifieke maatschappelijke beweging in een bepaalde periode in het verleden. Deze periode is voorbij, maar dit kunstwerk blijft er.
Blijft dan toch dit kunstwerk voor dit moment en ook voor de toekomst relevant?
Een vuist belichaamt zelfvertrouwen, kracht, creatieve of destructieve energie. Met een vuist wordt een oproep gedaan om eigenhandig optreden, onderhands, optreden met harde hand.
Dit wordt snel in verband gebracht met maatschappelijk verzet, het optreden tegen de machthebber. Dit betekent weer dat de ‘gewone mannen’ opkomen voor de eigen rechten tegenover de gevestigde overheid. Dit zou kunnen doordat onrecht te lang heeft geduurd of dat inzicht is ontstaan.
Opnieuw stel ik de vraag: is deze vuist relevant?
Ik denk dat de meningen sterk uiteen lopen over de huidige maatschappelijke situatie van de armen en de zwakkeren.
Een andere vraag kan ook zijn: is het nog steeds relevant dat een kunstenaar een vuist maakt. Ik denk van wel. Ik ben warm voorstander van kunst die inzicht geeft en ondersteunt bij het opkomen en verkrijgen van rechten van gelijkwaardige en rechtvaardige behandeling.
Door Theo, www.artatsite.com

www.wikipedia.org:
Piotr Uklański (born 1968) is a contemporary Polish-American artist who has produced art since the mid 1990s which have explored themes of spectacle, cliche, and tropes of modern art. Many of his pieces and projects take well-known, overused, sometimes sentimental subjects and tropes and both embraces and subverts them. Untitled (Dance Floor) (1996) is one of his best known works which took a minimalist grid floor in the gallery and developed it into a disco dance floor activated with sound and lit with bright colors. His works have been featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Piotr Uklański: "I studied painting, but in the evenings I was doing performances. The performances, at the time, I was interested in for photographs. It was sort of like I was creating an image in the performance, and that in some way led me to my interest in photography. And interestingly, I would dog sit, I had to make money. I lived in New York, I didn't have any support, I was the classic 'got off the plane to go to school.' So I worked in the studios, and I think the two collided. With people, like Guy Bourdin—at the time I did not know who Guy Bourdin was—you realize that you can work in the commercial world of photography and still make art. That's what I was aiming at. That's not exactly how I ended up supporting myself as an artist, but that was the interest that I took when it came to photography."
The style of Uklański's work is as wide-ranging as his use of materials. His work has challenged societal views on death and sex, and also often explores political movements as they intersect with society and media. An example is his work, The Nazis (1998), in which he displays movie stills of well-known actors playing Nazis, with color and contrast changes in the style of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) 1967. In his 2015 exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklański Photographs, and Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklański Selects from the Met Collection, Uklański's styles were distinct both in his own work, and through the generally shocking choices of photographs he collected from the museum's archives. Some of his pieces, like Untitled (Dance Floor) 1996 and Untitled (The Nazis) 1998 are clean and neat, whereas others like Untitled (Story of the Eye) 2013 are messy, overflowing, or frayed. One of his sculptures, Untitled (Polonia) (2005), is minimalist but monumental, made of glass, and stands as a response to a political event.

www.guggenheim.org:
Uklański has toyed with viewers' expectations, embracing spectacle and cliché and at times playfully reenvisioning the tropes of modernist art. Untitled (Dance Floor) (1996), one of Uklański's best known works, revamps the austere Minimalist grid as a sound-activated, brightly colored floor, a site for communal enjoyment and release.
Further commentary on Poland's history presides in Uklański's recent sculptural works, including a 2005 and 2008 Styrofoam eagle (the country's emblem); a clenchéd fist of resilience, made in 2007; a miniature town of Eastern European-styled architectural models, created in 2008; and aerial photographs, made in 2008, of people spelling 'Solidarity' in Polish and then dispersing.