NYAB Event - Pawel Wojtasik "Like a Shipwreck We Die Going Into Ourselves"

Pawel Wojtasik "Like a Shipwreck We Die Going Into Ourselves"

Martos Gallery

This event has ended.

This will be his first solo exhibition at the gallery. For the exhibition, which takes its title from the poem Nothing but Death by Pablo Neruda, Wojtasik will address the subject matter of autopsies. The word autopsy comes from the Greek autopsia, meaning "an eye-witnessing." Wojtasik takes this idea of witnessing and uses it to transform our thoughts and visions of the body while it undergoes dissection.

The show consists of a video, along with still images on digital displays that slowly change over time, creating meditative moments as the viewer moves through the gallery space. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Autopsy, September 25th - a video of footage from an actual autopsy. The work transcends the usual assumptions that surround autopsies by revealing an uncommon beauty in visceral imagery. The components of the exhibition come together to open up an investigation into the complex process of which life, death and the nature of human identity are a part. The works reference the tradition, beginning in the Renaissance, of the investigation into the body's interior, most notably in the works of Vesalius, DaVinci and Rembrandt, and later in contemporary works of Stan Brakhage, Francis Bacon and Andres Serrano.