Hypoxia

The series Hypoxia was created as an attempt to construct an image of the greatest possible visual weight and oppressive intensity. During the process I confronted, in an intuitive way, my own tensions and experiences of self-destructive impulses, which found their expression in the radical simplification and intensity of form.

Selected works from the series were qualified for the International Graphic Arts Triennial IMPRINT 2011 dedicated to Tadeusz Kulisiewicz in Warsaw.

The interpretation of the works is well captured in a fragment of a review by Dr. Sebastian Dudzik:

“The works by Łukasz Gierlak titled Hypoxia evoke the context of the loss of individual identity. The composition, purist in form, presents the outline of a human head set against a pure white background. The features of the figure are blurred and deformed by the material tightly covering the body. The first, almost unavoidable impression is that of a drastic scene of a suffocated person. The titular deprivation of oxygen in the tissues seems to confirm this association.

After a moment, however, the first dilemma appears, difficult to resolve. Is this an act of violence, or perhaps a form of self-destruction increasingly observed in developed metropolitan societies? In either case, a literal reading of the image strikes the viewer with its brutality, placing an equal sign between the act of violence, its physical consequences and the process of dehumanization. It also raises doubts about the existence of an immortal soul.

Gierlak’s compositions can also be interpreted in a less literal way. In this perspective the deformation and erasure of facial features appear as a symbolic act of transformation of a human being trapped by reality. It is a painful process that may lead to complete self-destruction — the killing of one’s own subjectivity.”