Grzegorz Stefański, choke

About

His artistic practice is located at the nexus of psychology, performance and film; primarily concerned with power, identity and the politics of embodiment. Stefański’s interrogation into the complex dichotomy of the male body, is a common thread running through this exhibition. Where the male body is capable of holding multiple, contradictory connotations, each gesture or movement is often reduced to an expression of power. Stefański’s artistic practice seeks to blur these boundaries. His most recent work is a ten-minute video installation, choke (2017). The slow-motion film canvases the unfolding of movements of two Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters who perform their routine for the camera. The film here becomes a vehicle for observation, where the entangled limbs and torsos are abstracted from their context, and their connotations obscured. The fast-paced violence of a Jiu-Jitsu fight is replaced by an intense power-playoff between the moving figures — expressed in each grasp, clench and pivot. Whilst each minuscule movement of the male body might be conceived as an expression of power, Stefański’s intimate, borderline invasive, filming of the interaction between these two male bodies raises questions as to what is permissible in male-on-male contact. In this sense, choke blurs the boundaries between expressions of force and those of intimacy.

do-over (2016) similarly looks to abstract and displace the male body, where the gestures performed by a young musical conductor border on violent expressions of might and power. Whilst the conductor’s memory acts as an archive, his body becomes a vessel for the expression of a complex symphony of gestures. Though the movements retain a sense of instruction, they seem to mimic expressions of auto-aggression — where the conductor, in his solitary stance, appears to be fighting with himself. In this sense, the work explores the power relations we hold with ourselves, and the role aggression plays in acts of self-control.

The photograph, restraint (2016), depicts the torsos of two men in Nazi uniforms, holding in restraint a civilian. The image is a reconstruction of a photograph included in the Evidence (1977) series — a collaborative project by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel that explores the reappropriation of documentary images in art. Stefański’s reconstruction takes the concept one step further: using two different groups of historical actors, dressed in authentic uniforms, restraint radically calls into question the authenticity of power itself, whilst examining how positions of authority can be manifested through patterns of behaviour. The power-dynamic between the men is clear, though the precise conditions of the situation are not. Nevertheless the image is charged with tension, carrying with it an undercurrent of violence. Whether the aggression of the image is the product of the actors’ acute historical knowledge or the uniform they wear is unnerving considering the superficiality of the event. It seems the choreographed nature of the set-up does little to detract from the image’s abusive connotations.