Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz. Men

The illustrated publication with a critique written by Paweł Leszkowicz accompanies the exhibition Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz \"Men\". \"The true male body, the truth of this body, continues to be a great taboo, despite the delusion that we live in a culture where sexuality and corporality have ceased to be secret. Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz's nudes reach to the essence of this taboo and simultaneously uphold it\" (quoted from Paweł Leszkowicz\'s text for the exhibition catalogue) This cycle of paintings consists of canvases the artist painted in the years 2002-2008. It is a series of large-format paintings representing life-size male nudes and without restraint portraying a body that to this day accompanies Polish art. These works portray a nudity in which there are is no sense of shame or restraint. Ćwiertniewicz breaks away from the tradition of fig leaves, but depicts his nudes with moderation; there is more of the laboratory than the erotic in his analysis of the male sex. The identity of his sitters, despite the considerable difference in their ages, the diversity of their origins, education and paths taken in life, is not achieved by portrayal of their individually discovered features. The usually emotional rapport between painter and model, the search for a unique outline and the individuality of the model, have been here replaced by a cool impartiality, subjectivism - objectivism, and the variety of male types seems to have been subjected to unification. The twenty-two men to which the title of the exhibition refers, painted en face and filling two whole rooms of the aTAK Gallery, constitute the most daring and most radical exhibition in the history of a gallery that until now has been known for its presentation of classics from Polish painting.