KRAKOW.- Medicine in Art is another exhibition in the series that confronts terms permeating the public sphere of reference with the viewpoint of the artist. Medicine is present throughout human life and impacts on all its aspects. Medicine offers help and cure, while putting us to task and inspiring reflection. The connotations it has are, above all, illness, pain and therapeutic treatment. Another theme is physical wasting and death. Illness goes hand in hand with care giving and compassion and this is the area of medicine that the patient and doctor share. Medicine is also a science, which in its vast scope comprises pharmaceutical, biological and psychological experimentation, dealing with the ethical issues that ensue. This scientific aspect also includes the psychology of illness understood as the relationship between the state of the mind and the state of the physical body.
Psychiatry is another fascinating medical area which enables us to look at how ‘being different’ can be a source of creativity and provide artistic therapy, where illness can indeed be extinguished through art. Another topical area of medicine, if one often looked down on, is plastic surgery, that enables individuals to live out their dream of being forever beautiful and young.
Medicine is a source of many topics that in various ways torment the human psyche, thus an artistic field of engagement par excellence. Artists are finely tuned into ‘symbol providers’. And medicine is a versatile provider. Above all, it has an overview of what it means to be doomed to live in a mortal body.
The photographs refer to two functions of human skin: the biological and the cultural. On the one hand, skin is the protective barrier of the body, on the other it reflects our lifestyle and provides a contour for our bodily shape. In our contemporary culture, the care that we lavish on our body simultaneously expresses our caring about our own image and, just as much as the clothes that we wear, becomes a form of manifesting our individuality. The ever more complex care treatments and plastic surgery available provide for these modern needs.
Prof. Iain Hutchison, who specialises in face surgery, has participated with this project. He decided to document the state of his patients through painting. According to the professor, this old-fashioned technique that does not fulfil the criteria of objective documentation has nevertheless therapeutic value. The patients posing for portraits feel distinguished because – in spite of their still‑imperfect faces – they have become the subject of a work of art, thereby their disfigurement acquiring significance.
From the point of view of medical science, the patient can be a conduit of information and the object of investigation. His blood is valuable source of data about the human body. ‘BSG’, the title of the installation, refers to the indicator of falling erythrocytes, which in medical diagnostic is a marker of inflammation, rheumatism or cancer. During her practice as a doctor, the artist collected samples from various patients. 3 800 numbered phials display the variety of the samples, by the same token revealing the mysterious individuality of each examined patient. Blood enables us to gain a lot of information about the human being. The aesthetic layer of the installation which relies on its colour changes in time, due to decay.
The self-portrait employs the technique of an X-ray photograph. The artist has included her bone structure as well as her jewellery and signed the work with the date of her birth and the year that she would like to live to. The representation of the skull inevitably evokes connotations with death; the portrait renders the ephemerality of life with the timelessness of art.
The painting that shows a mammographic examination was inspired by a photograph published in a women’s magazine. The photograph provided the pretext for painting a life study, whilst at the same time, according to the inscription, calling for preventative treatment. In our daily existence we try not to think about ever finding ourselves in the risk group; we pretend that such topics do not apply to us and so forget about medical check-ups, only visiting the doctor when symptoms appear. The artist gave this painting to his mother in order to remind her about the necessity of regular medical check-ups.
The staged photograph was created on the basis of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt(1632) which commemorated a public post‑mortem which took place each year in Amsterdam. In the 17th century such spectacles were popular throughout Europe, drawing in crowds of those eager to gain knowledge or looking for thrills. The presentations had the aura of a theatrical performance and the medical tools were employed as props. The master of ceremony aimed to show human anatomy as an entertaining spectacle, which led to the origin of the phrase ‘operating theatre’. In this contemporary take on the composition, the physician and spectators have been replaced by masked agents of the special forces. The bloodless post-mortem is being performed on an elegantly dressed man, who has replaced the cadaver of the thief in the original version.
When preparing an exhibition in one of the galleries, the artist noticed a first‑aid box and requested permission to process it. He repainted some of the containers and added three miniature pictures. He turned something real into a painterly object. This is a rare instance of an artist leaving direct evidence of having looked at the world through pictures painted, instead of – as the majority do – looking at it through the images encountered.
Artists: Marina Abramović, Eleanor Antin, Marta Antoniak, Kader Attia, Małgorzata Blamowska, Piotr Blamowski, Micha Brendel, Daniele Buetti, Beatriz da Costa, Oskar Dawicki, Ugo Dossi, Marian Eile, Iaia Filiberti / Debora Hirsch, Mark Gilbert, Zbigniew Herbert, Markus Käch, Fritz Kahn, Tadeusz Kantor, Krištof Kintera, Jürgen Klauke, Bartosz Kokosiński, Robert Kuśmirowski, Konrad Kuzyszyn, Milja Laurila, Dominik Lejman, Zoe Leonard, Zbigniew Libera, Marcin Maciejowski, Man Ray, Shahar Marcus, Bjørn Melhus / Yves Netzhammer, Edith Micansky, Aurelia Mihai, Andrzej Mleczko, Yasumasa Morimura, Sofie Muller, Julia Neuenhausen, Meret Oppenheim, ORLAN, Ben Patterson, Joanna Pawlik, Joanna Rajkowska, Sophie Ristelhueber, Wilhelm Sasnal, Nikita Shalennyi, Heather Sheehan, Kiki Smith, Annegret Soltau, Jo Spence, Daniel Spoerri, Alina Szapocznikow, Grzegorz Sztwiertnia, Nicole Tran Ba Vang, VALIE EXPORT, Hannah Wilke, Joel-Peter Witkin
