The body, corporeality, gender, desire, various shades of love – they are among the most important themes of the contemporary world of art. Since the 1970s artists have been concerned with deconstruction and reinterpretation of their traditional images. Thus the artistic search has become a part of essential cultural discourse, dealing with numerous taboos and mystifications in artistic realisations.

The female and male nude and the ways it functions in different cultural regions has been Piotr Ciesielski’s subject of interest for a long time. Moreover, his creative expression has always been quite complex. In his artistic work the artist was simultaneously involved in a variety of disciplines: graphic art, painting, photography. A public presentation of diaporama entered subsequent areas of art, becoming a kind of performance, a space-time phenomenon. Juxtaposition of transformed images of the female body and a live model, used in diaporamas, currently took form of moving images comprising a digital film.

As far as imitation of the human image is concerned, art certainly represents a great mimetic value. What is more important, however, it is also involved in the process of constructing imaginary patterns of femininity and masculinity and their interpretation. In the range of issues contemporary artists – including Piotr Ciesielski – raise, there are questions concerning the way gender and sexual standards are incorporated into the body subject, how they are related to traditional binarity characteristic of their description (two sexes, two sexual roles, two sexual orientations).

Common access to varied sources of images, extending the bounds of freedom to present them make the sphere of corporeality and sexuality to a smaller extent controlled by culture, become more commercialised, more diverse and liberated as far as its manifestations go.

Both in Piotr Ciesielski’s paintings, his photography, diaporamas or films the body and gender are often treated as a role to be played – like in the whole contemporary culture. In today’s world gender identity is all the time exposed and verified. Being a woman or a man is a disguise, a masquerade, a sexual game. In many cases transformation is a necessity when facing disapproval of one’s own physical condition and the danger of disclosure in the reality which is encumbered with prejudice and anxiety. The artist seems to show that once someone adopted that kind of approach, having entered the sphere of culture, man is mentally entrapped.

Large format oil and acrylic paintings – portraits of a little stylised beautiful naked women, staring at some meaningful props or elements of garments are a significant part of the latest stage of Piotr Ciesielski’s artwork. They were painted with photographic precision. Presented full frontal, they are posed against the background of synthetic, only contour – though decorative – naked figures of human beings, distinct from homogenous coloured planes. Despite the fact that the sensual figures from the foreground take quite uninhibited poses, these nudes still go with the long tradition of this genre. The frontal position has been characteristic of sensual erotic representations for ages.

Although such images refer to sexuality of portrayed individuals, they are actually created in order to sanction sexuality of the viewer or the owner of the painting. Referring to historical conventions which in a particular way expose sex attributes and feature them in a conventional staffage as well as using props (often in a symbolic role) in fact reveal the applied – in the past and today – erotic rhetoric. Whereas the craftsmanship perfection Piotr Ciesielski created his painting with might be a tribute to the old masters’ genius, the arrangement of contrastive plans and their spectacular features are – in a way – an ironic comment concerning the rules which were dominating in some historical periods as far as nudes were concerned. The artist, similarly to photographs taken collaterally, is interested in to what extent sensuality is an immanent feature of a created image (and a model), and how much it merely depends on the artwork, suggestion and our attitude and is an active feature – it is transferred as an impulse from the painting to the viewer.

Presentation of diaporamas and digital film pictures equally strongly emphasize the contrast of two realities: the live body and its imaginary or processed images. Even more explicitly than in oil or acrylic paintings or still photograms, the artist manages to stress here duality and incongruity of corporeal and sexual spheres – the ones functioning in the ‘natural’ environment of people and in the circles of ‘media creation’. Fluent, sometimes provocative, yet natural movements of models’ bodies stay in contrast with mechanical cropping which causes that images of human figures overlap with elements of artificial iconosphere.

It is one of numerous dissonances that appear in this area.

Our physical and physiological imperfection – confronted with requirements of contemporary culture – demands the best, the most attractive self-presentation. Natural sensuality is covered with conventional formulas, actually embodying the commercial consumerist picture of contemporary unrestrained eroticism. A rather grotesque effect arises, characterised by deceit, exaggeration and gloss. A paradox is that the disciplines which set standards, like advertisement or pornography, emphasize authenticity and randomness of this process, being artificial and designed creations themselves.

In the works of the artist from Lodz – sometimes perhaps against his intention – somehow naive and inappropriate ‘ballet’ gestures of models in his films as well as poses and gestures of those in paintings, reveal the discrepancy between natural behaviours and the need to meet the expectations of an attractive sensual play – tricks originating from popular magazines, erotic films and fantasies from our imagination.

In this peculiar adoration of the body can we observe a search for new features, not connected with religious traditions which the contemporary man less and less frequently participates in? New rituals might restore, at least partly, mystic aspects of love lost a long time ago.

The processed image refers us to the contemporary culture of gadgets and the sphere of consumption. Aesthetic measures, improving human appearance, or situating human beings within their surroundings, coloured and full of attractions, are a manifestation of a particular kind of colonisation of the human body.

Referring to the image of pop culture Piotr Ciesielski also shows how easily we can go beyond the limits of the artistic search and enter the area of obscenity, which in art becomes a form of defence against the reality, and which uses the body as an object or a decorative element. Or perhaps he only wants to say that the division between what is sublime and low in art of the body is often hard to capture. And to ask to what extent do we suppress in culture what is natural, subconscious and - most significantly - genuine.

Daring, saturated and expressive colours, decorative sinuous drawing of paintings’ background, dynamic patches of colour, outflows, abrasions in photograms would be then both the image release of what is instinctive, unrestrained in nature as well as a sign of tawdry artificial creation which today’s body and its urges are subject to. Moreover, covering the realistic images of models with contrastive vital patches of colour mitigates another dissonance: between the calm photographic image and the energetic painting gesture in the construction of the photographic and film picture.

At present discovering humanity takes place in a vast space, seemingly not closed with any borders. In the contemporary transgressive culture characterised by lack of cohesion, by episodic and fragmentary nature the human body is treated as a social construct defined again and again. Changes in the image of man and woman in art are associated with the performative character of cultural gender. The world of binarily undifferentiated corporeality is populated by figures of indefinite labile sexual identity, with different – than traditionally approved – attributes and preferences. The sex division based on the ideal models of what is masculine and feminine ceases to prevail. Gender and the associated sexuality models more and more frequently fall apart.

The key message that is subtly conveyed to us both through paintings, photograms and – most of all – the sequence of film shots created by Piotr Ciesielski is the extension of the phenomenon of love, sensual and erotic emotions, between extreme phenomena, ranging from hetero- , auto- up to homoeroticism. Simplified contour images of lovers on the canvases occur in a variety of configurations. Film pictures originally exposing images of women and men gradually focus on seductive figures of women, who finally meet each other; frames overlap and permeate – with time the image of man is removed from that sapphic reality of the closing scenes.

Upsetting or contesting the bounds of gender identity in art results in emphasizing motives of imperfection, shortage or – on the contrary – an excess of form. Female bodies are particularly susceptible to this kind of measures, they are perceived as incomplete, partly veiled, bandaged, half naked, deprived of the attributes of femininity understood in a traditional way.

In Piotr Ciesielski’s works the explicit image of the body is also in a way labile as flowing simplified painterly planes are superimposed on the picture, or it is placed in a greatly exaggerated setting. These activities, however, are not the ones which are to strip them of their beauty or charm, they do not cripple them – their vagueness lies in excess, in what was added, what blurs or obliterates their genuine appearance. Ornate, slightly grotesque hats the models wear, ornamental backgrounds which can refer us to inspirations and allusions ranging from Baroque art to modern trends in painting, sometimes make an impression of satiety. The artist implies that interferences and disorder are the result of space actions which help create the body, corporeality, sexuality in compliance with the requirements of the prevailing culture and its followers.

In all works visual pleasure is a sufficient effect – the author does not have to offer any profound narration. Piotr Ciesielski baldly exposes the setting typical of the traditional model of culture, the one which favours man’s point of view and opts for being exposed to visual and aesthetic impressions. The dominating feature of such – usually frontal – presentation becomes the pleasure based on the male power of look and reducing women to the role of an observed object (assigning her the role of an exhibitionist).

We live in the culture of both physical and emotional exposure. Media offer a variety of – far from traditional – images of sexuality, creating culture free of moral-ethical choices, overcoming numerous taboos. The present-day perfect eye of media resolves the body into parts and views it in close-up. It focuses on the superficial layer, on detail, does not search for the whole and the profound.

Piotr Ciesielski simultaneously takes on the painting matter and the world of new media. We might presuppose that the artist still, as in the past, examines the relations between the represented object and its image painted on canvas and collaterally obtained by means of a camera or a video camera. The question of the relation between ‘the apparent, easy photographic realism’ and ‘more credible painstaking copying by painterly means of expression’ is still discussed in his latest works. It seems that if we talk about the reality distortion in reference to such sensitive phenomena as the body, sensuality, eroticism – Piotr Ciesielski, despite his passion for the new media, still, even unconsciously, sides with painting, when ‘realism’ and ‘the truth’ are concerned.

Piotr Ciesielski’s works (and we mean different forms of artistic expression) could be merely described as an expression of the continuation of certain tradition, a component of artistic continuum founded on studying motives of portraits and nudes. We can appreciate the remarkable craftsmanship: graphic, painting, photographic, emphasize the convincing compositional, colour, light and shade choices.

However, when we take into account the fact that in the artwork of this artist the contrast of plans that build the image has always been a significant expression of the world interpretation, such an analysis is not sufficient enough. Extremely tense juxtapositions of varied messages draw our attention beyond the sphere of aesthetic goals. It is time to start the subtly conceived game with the viewer. We do not only look at portraits of strangers. They provide an insight into the way we see ourselves. We try to find ourselves in the images, playing subsequent roles, rooted in certain tradition and all the time being involved in a discourse with culture. Justifying our imperfection with others’ imperfection, finding consolation in others’ insecurity, sometimes ridiculousness.

Contemporary culture is expressed in the body which simultaneously becomes its memory. Revealing the mechanisms which rule creation, presentation and perception of the body representations lets us capture the whole picture of the contemporary man, the one which will never be complete and ultimate. Nevertheless, it helps us understand who we are.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska