PAWEL WOJTASIK & DENISE MARKONISH
Exquisite Corpse: Witnessing Death & Beauty
By Denise Markonish
Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
- Emily Dickinson, Part Four: Time and Eternity XXXI
In Rembrandt's 1632 painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp a group of men stand hovering over a splayed and cut open body. What is immediately apparent is that none of the men's gazes fall directly onto the body, rather they look out and across and we, the viewers of the viewers, stand in as the only witnesses. Though there is no life left in this body, Rembrandt imbues it with presence, through a shaft of illuminating light. When watching Pawel Wojtasik's video Autopsy, September, 25th we once again stand as witnesses to a body bathed in light, however, here no gaze is averted, and instead we are left to ponder the point where body and presence diverge. In Wojtasik's work the dialogue, as Emily Dickinson states, is between "the spirit and the dust," between the body and the concept of the human.
The art historic image of death goes beyond Rembrandt; Leonardo DaVinci drew the dissected body as did other Renaissance artists, and later Francis Bacon, Stan Brakhage, and Andres Serrano all took on the topic. What initially separates Wojtasik from his predecessors is the pace of his work, which lies somewhere between the complete stillness of a painting or photograph and the brisk movement of film. In his autopsy works, Wojtasik films with a concentrated type of vision, his camera trained on a subject, often in extreme close up, waiting for the action to unfold. The process is slowed down; creating a meditative state that reawakens the viewers, allowing them to concentrate on the image gradually unfolding before their eyes. Accompanying this video are still images which slowly morph into one another on digital screens, further abstracting the body as it is in the process of being systematically taken apart.
By shifting the pace of vision from quick take to lingering look, Wojtasik emphasizes the role of witnessing, and we as viewers become increasingly aware of our own presence. This act of viewing is akin to the word autopsy itself, which comes from the Greek autopsia, meaning "an eye-witnessing." From this looking comes a reinforcement of the notion of presence, what it means to be in one's mind and body. When experiencing Wojtasik's work, we are looking at the body being dissected and seemingly losing its sense of being, its sense of spirit, only to be replaced instead with a kind of thingness. Questioning the moment when the human ceases to be is not a question of death alone; it is an unanswerable metaphysical conundrum, one that Wojtasik asks but leaves to individual interpretation. This work then exists as a riddle, a Zen koan; it is the mystery of the essence of life with death by its side.
Once these larger issues are revealed, the thing that lingers most is beauty, which in the case of Wojtasik's work is startling and sears into your retina. Wojtasik is like an alchemist turning blood, viscera and flesh into the sublime. The transformation that takes place in this work is when the revolting transcends itself, falling instead into the realm of the beautiful. To achieve this, Wojtasik employs chiaroscuro-style lighting along with close-up abstraction of the body, which turns parts of his video into painterly abstractions, thus imbuing the imagery with a kind of uncommon beauty. In his novel Nadja, Andre Breton, an expert on unclassifiable beauty, ends with the phrase: "Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all." Here I end as well, with the knowledge that Wojtasik's autopsy works shift not only our ideas of death, presence and the body, but that of the eye of the beholder and the beauty inherent within.
Statement
The body-interior speaks to our own mortality. Hence, the sight of these inner contours has traditionally been denied us since they are usually encountered only at the risk of enduring great pain and quite possibly death. The surgeon (even within the harshly empirical structures of western medicine) therefore enjoys a rare cultural status as mediator between the exterior and the interior worlds. The surgeon seems to share the iconic status of the artist (or the visionary) within our culture, since both are held to be in possession of a privileged gaze which is able to pass beyond common experience, through surface structures, to encounter a reserved core of reality.,br/>
- Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned
Jose Martos Gallery is pleased to present Like a Shipwreck We Die Going Into Ourselves, an exhibition of new work by Pawel Wojtasik. This will be his first solo exhibition at the gallery. For the exhibition, which takes its title from the poem Nothing but Death by Pablo Neruda, Wojtasik will address the subject matter of autopsies. The word autopsy comes from the Greek autopsia, meaning "an eye-witnessing." Wojtasik takes this idea of witnessing and uses it to transform our thoughts and visions of the body while it undergoes dissection.
The show consists of a video, along with still images on digital displays that slowly change over time, creating meditative moments as the viewer moves through the gallery space. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Autopsy, September 25th - a video of footage from an actual autopsy. The work transcends the usual assumptions that surround autopsies by revealing an uncommon beauty in visceral imagery. The components of the exhibition come together to open up an investigation into the complex process of which life, death and the nature of human identity are a part. The works reference the tradition, beginning in the Renaissance, of the investigation into the body's interior, most notably in the works of Vesalius, DaVinci and Rembrandt, and later in contemporary works of Stan Brakhage, Francis Bacon and Andres Serrano.
For Wojtasik, this exhibition is not merely about the body in death. Rather it is a probing into the larger process of life and death and what may lie beyond, as we go into ourselves.
