Nude women in mythical environs. Bared-teeth beasts. Christ, blood, semen, psychoanalysis, and all that jazz. I see these symbols and tropes being recycled endlessly in art schools, and I saw that done again in Warsaw-based artist Agata Słowak’s debut solo exhibition at Fortnight Institute in Manhattan’s East Village.
Like a page out of Sigmund Freud’s therapy notebook, all the main protagonists of Słowak’s paintings are the artist herself. It’s Słowak looking back at us, alongside another nude female figure, a nude man with a hole in his chest and a swan passed out next to his penis. It’s also her seated, nude, with blood springing from her palm (Jesus reference #1) as an erect penis shoots sperm at her. In another one, it’s a fox and a polar bear tearing the artist’s head in two, her naked body flanked by two obscure phalluses. In a more explicit painting, we see the artist’s cracked skull and exposed gray matter drenched with semen. This is clearly personal work, which might have to do with the queer artist’s upbringing in a deeply Catholic society such as Poland. But I wish it wasn’t delivered to us with overused iconographic motifs that recall too many 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-style (Jesus reference #2). In another, “Penis Constellation (Kitty’s Paw)” a fisher’s net (Jesus reference #3) pierces an upright phallus as a woman’s hand rests on one of the man’s thighs and a cat’s paw on the other.
The penises happen to be the most skillfully rendered subjects in the exhibition: no other body part on display is awarded such attentive detail. And they didn’t come across as a provocation like phallic imagery by some male artists. Rather, they seemed to signify the pain of romantic attachment, casting Słowak as both the tortured and torturer.
One painting in the show stood out as different from all the rest. In “You Were Cold in My Shadow,” a man licks his own gouged-out eyeball, which Słowak holds in her mouth. A building is on fire in the background. It’s another disturbing image but one that creates its own symbolism without relying too heavily on Christ, cocks, and stigmata.
Though I wasn’t too convinced by this exhibition, the artist’s first in the United States, there’s a strangeness and horror to Słowak’s paintings that makes them appealing, despite their thematic failings.
Agata Słowak: Time Is Love continues at the Fortnight Institute (21 East 3rd Street, East Village, Manhattan) through 24. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
