A Day in the Life: Piotr Uklanski
Photo by Christopher Anderson
By Meghan Dailey
Published: June 3, 2008
A little over a year ago, the artist Piotr Uklanski moved his studio from downtown Manhattan to the Polish enclave of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. “It’s not an accident that this is where I chose to be,” says the 39-year-old Warsaw native. After all, Uklanski wrote and directed Summer Love: The First Polish Western, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2006. And in 2003, at the Frieze art fair in London, he spray painted the words Boltanski, Polanski, Uklanski on a wall, audaciously proclaiming a national creative lineage that includes him. His paintings, photographs and sculptural installations engage both kitsch and fine-art forms—the flashing grid of Dance Floor, 1996, riffs on Minimalist and popular aesthetics—but Polish culture is never very far away. Uklanski’s recent solo debut at the Gagosian Gallery in New York was titled “Bialo-Czerwona” (“Red-White”), a reference to Poland’s bicolor flag. The exhibition, which ran through May 17, was a tour de force that included a soaring mosaic made from about 800 ceramic dishes, a series of dramatic bloodred and white paintings and a huge raised fist made of steel tubing. With his spiky blond hair and shirts typically worn unbuttoned to midchest, Uklanski has the slightly louche air of a rock star. But when it comes to producing his work, he is an exacting perfectionist. March 14—a coffee-fueled Friday a little less than two weeks before the opening of his show—found him consumed with preparations and myriad details: scrutinizing a 13-foot-high sculpture of a crowned eagle (a variation on Poland’s national symbol); negotiating with fabricators over the details of another large-scale site-specific piece; and firming up the installation schedule with the gallery—not to mention finishing a painting with a blowtorch. 7:00 A.M. Wakes up in the East Village duplex he shares with his girlfriend and close collaborator, Alison Gingeras, the curator of François Pinault’s art collection. They usually start their day when their two-year-old daughter, Marysia, awakens. Lately, though, Uklanski says, “stress has been waking us at 4 a.m.” 7:45 A.M. Walks Sid, a Jack Russell and German pointer mix. Stops at a hole-in-the-wall coffee place on 9th Street. 8:20 A.M. Returns home with a latte for Gingeras and reads a few e-mails, including one from his Milan dealer, Massimo De Carlo, on his iPhone. Eats pancakes and has playtime with Marysia. 9:50 A.M. Gets his car, an electric-blue Toyota FJ Cruiser, from the garage; swings by the apartment to pick up Gingeras and Sid. Gives me and my tape recorder a slightly wary glance. “Are you really going to record everything?” he asks. “Just pretend I’m a journalist,” I reply. “Pretend I’m an artist!” he shouts, then laughs— a throaty, wicked, almost cartoonish cackle that is something of a trademark. 10:12 A.M. Weaving in and out of traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge, Bollywood music playing on the stereo, he answers a call from Borden Capalino, his main studio assistant. “I’ll be there in two minutes,” he drawls. Conversation then moves from the virtues of the Bedford Cheese Shop, in Williamsburg, to a dinner the previous night at the hip Brooklyn restaurant Dressler. 10:30 A.M. Stops for coffee at Café Grumpy, a few blocks from the studio. Peruses a refrigerated case of sandwiches while running his hands through his hair. He is wearing one green army jacket over another, tighter one; a pale pink dress shirt; thoroughly broken- in jeans; and handmade Italian shoes. A fuchsia Paul Smith neckerchief adds a flourish. At the counter, he picks up a bright yellow espresso cup and says, “Alison really likes these, so we ordered some of the same kind for the mosaic.” 10:40 A.M. Parks at the side entrance to his studio, a one-story commercial building. The interior is divided into art-making and administrative areas. A large rectangular space serves as Uklanski’s office, where he now takes a seat at one end of a very long table and faces two computer monitors. He puts in a call to the landlord of his apartment in Warsaw to discuss the rent (it’s going up). |
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