PIOTRUKLANSKI(b. 1969)Untitled.Colored pencil shavings with adhesive and Plexiglas, in bird's eye maple frame.60 ¼ x 110 ¼ x 4 in. (153 x 280 x 10.2 cm).Executed in 2002.Provenance
Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New YorkPiotr Uklanski's work explores the fields of painting and photography, as well as the borderland between design, sculpture and environment. His ongoing preoccupation with sunsets, flowers, full moonlit skies, city lights, and shimmering water goes beyond their photographic depictions in his signature series The Joy of Photography (1996 to present). Other works such as his torn paper collages, paintings made of pencil shavings, as well as sculptural installations (e.g. water spilled on the gallery floor Untitled (Wet Floor), 2000), all reference the same prosaic themes while utilizing extremely simplified techniques or formal devices. The shared affinity in this eclectic body of work lies in a crass, if not arrogant ambition: an earnest attempt to capture 'beauty' (A. M. Gingeras, Artforum, September 2003).

A renowned provocateur, Piotr Uklanksi's modus operandi spans a wide range of styles and media. His work traverses the territories of painting, photography and the nebulous frontier between design, sculpture and environment. The resultant idiosyncratic body of work distinguishes itself by being both beautiful and on occasion disturbing.

He is able to transmute his ideas into tangible form through the use of very basic materials and processes. "..His Torn paper collages, paintings made from pencil shavings , as well as sculpture; installations, all reference prosaic themes while utilizing extremely simlified techniques or formal Devices" (ibid). In the present lot Untitled, 2002, Uklanski creates a composition comprised simply of pencil shavings, a material that is typically brushed aside or regarded as refuse. The final product is a complex composition of color and form; rich in texture and charged with energy. Further adding to the work is the multilayered application of the bright yellow shavings to the substructure imbuing the composition with a sense of three-dimensionality and movement. It is by doing this that Uklanski further blurs the obfuscated realm that exists between painting and sculpture and simultaneously redefining our concepts of beauty.