Naked women in a mythical environment. Animals with bare teeth. Christ, blood, sperm, psychoanalysis and all that jazz. I see these symbols and tropes being recycled endlessly in art schools, and saw it again in Warsaw-based artist Agata Słowak’s first solo exhibition at the Fortnight Institute in the East Manhattan village.
Like a page from Sigmund Freud’s therapy diary, all the main protagonists in Słowak’s paintings are the artist herself. It is Słowak staring at us, alongside another naked female figure, a naked man with a hole in his chest and a swoon swan next to his penis. It’s also her sitting, naked, with blood gushing out of her palm (Jesus #1 reference) as an erect penis shoots cum out of her. In another, a fox and a polar bear tear the artist’s head in two, his naked body flanked by two dark phalluses. In a more explicit painting, we see the artist’s cracked skull and exposed gray matter soaked in semen. This is clearly a personal work, which could have to do with the upbringing of the queer artist in a deeply Catholic society like Poland. But I would like it not to be delivered to us with hackneyed iconographic motifs that are too reminiscent of other artists.
And then there are more penises. In “From the Cycle, White Balls on the Walls” (all paintings from 2023), a woman’s hand wraps around an erection, her fingers nailed into it, crucifixion-like (Jesus reference #2). In another, “Penis Constellation (Kitty’s Paw)”, a fisherman’s net (Jesus reference #3) pierces a right phallus as a woman’s hand rests on one of the man’s thighs and the paw of one cat on the other.
The penises happen to be the most skillfully rendered subjects of the exhibition: no other body part on display is so detailed. And they didn’t fall over as a provocation like the phallic imagery of some male artists. Rather, they seemed to signify the pain of romantic attachment, making Słowak both the tortured and the torturer.
One painting in the exhibition stood out as different from all the others. In “You Were Cold in My Shadow”, a man licks his own gouged out eyeball, which Słowak holds in his mouth. A building is on fire in the background. This is another disturbing image but which creates its own symbolism without relying too much on Christ, the roosters and the stigmata.
Although I was not overly convinced by this exhibition, the artist’s first in the United States, there is a strangeness and horror in Słowak’s paintings that make them appealing, despite their thematic flaws.
Agata Słowak: Time is love continues at the Fortnight Institute (21 East 3rd Street, East Village, Manhattan) until the 24th. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
