Piotr Uklański: a flag in contemporary art

Piotr Uklański is a traveller in continuous exploration, an immigrant in search of his promised land. His art is a perpetual journey where the artwork is the destination, a harbour that is ready to greet us. His research is fuelled by the imaginary of the countercultures, so in his works the idea of “Forma mentis”, in which each ethnic group is a unique cultural witness, is subverted. The Polish artist lives between Warsaw and New York, and it is precisely in the environments of New York in the first half of the ’90s that he made his debut as an artist, soon rising to fame with his site-specific installation “Untitled (Dance Floor)”. The artwork was conceived for the Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, where an illuminated checkerboard floor integrated music, architecture, and minimalist heritage. The artwork develops itself in space and time turning into a unique and interactive artistic experience. It was exhibited again thirteen years later in the wide spaces of Palazzo Grassi in Venice, “Untitled (Dancing Nazis)”, converting the work’s message under a more political and active connotation. The socio-political denouncement is a component from which Piotr Uklański’s art can not absolve. A rebel who has not submitted his art to any restrictions. For example, when his series of photographs ”Untitled (Nazi)” was exhibited at The Photographers Gallery in London in 1998, provoking various controversies, Uklanski decided to destroy all the photos. For his solo exhibition “Red, White and Blue” at Massimo De Carlo Gallery in Milan, the artist has created – through the use of tie-dye, the technical reference of hippie culture – large paintings that recall the symbols and colors of the American flag. The show opens with a picture of a sweet little girl placed in front of a flag, as in a face-off between humanity and the State, between innocence and nationalism. An oxymoron whose rhetoric is built with the free artistic expression and strict tones of a nation.