Video still from Tomasz Kozak's "Flash of the New Flesh", 2011, source: press materials
Tomasz Kozak's latest work is a video essay that treats the theme of corporality through the grotesque
The film, which originally debuted in Sweden at the Kalmar Konstmuseum in early March, draws from David Cronenberg's films and the director's approach to the flesh.
Taking as its motto the words of "The Fly" Seth Brundle: "Look beyond the veil of the flesh! Dive in the plasma pool!", repugnant imagery is juxtaposed with tenets from key philosophers of early modernity: D.A.F de Sade, F. W. J. Schelling and Friedrich Schiller, as well as the writings of Tadeusz Borowski, Ernst Jünger and Tadeusz Miciński and Freud. Kozak uses found footage to build a narrative scheme that unites symbols of the past and present, suggesting that the extreme and subversive ideologies spouted in contemporary forms of pop culture have a significant impact on the human conscience.
According to the Konstmuseum's Agnieszka Rayzacher:
Tomasz Kozak's work belongs to phenomena in Polish art scene which are most difficult to classify. The artist causes a lot of trouble to art critics, curators and directors of art institutions with his provocative attitude, unwilling to give up and join the prevailing liberal discourse or to left-wing trends, so popular among intellectual milieu. It wouldn't be right, however, to just call him neoconservatist, considering how perverse, rebellious and iconoclastic some of his works really are. Who, then, is Tomasz Kozak? A philosopher, an artist, an archaeologist or a magician? The question is better left open and as we strive to find an answer, it is worthwhile to get confronted with profound, awe-inspiring space of his work.
The exhibition runs between March 28 - May 6, 2011.
lokal_30
ul. Foksal 17b / 30, 00-372 Warsaw
Curator: Agnieszka Rayzacher
tel. (+48) 602 13 99 63
link*www.lokal30.pl* http://lokal30.pl****Source: press materials