JAKUB JULIAN ZIOLKOWSKI: STORY OF THE EYE

Jakub Julian Ziółkowski’s phantasmagorical drawings and paintings swarm with mutant life: plants sprout giant eyeballs, patchwork bodies threaten to slough off their skins or tumble into piles of dismembered parts, internal organs make their way outside, objects grow hair, faces are distorted as if infected with some unspeakable virus. Hallucinated and yet always maniacally precise, Ziółkowski ‘s work mixes expressionism with fantastical obsessions that seem pulled from the works of Hieronymus Bosch: the result is a surreal universe that appears imbued with history while remaining absolutely contemporary – a nightmare landscape all his own. In Story of the Eye, Ziółkowski has interpreted Georges Bataille’s controversial short pornographic novel, Story of the Eye (1928). First published under the pseudonym “Lord Auch” and not publicly attributed to Bataille until after his death, the book presents the depraved sexual exploits of two teenagers in a series of surreal vignettes, which are often fetishistically focused on disembodied eyes. These “eyes” are often tortured or demolished during the act of base bodily pursuits, actions that reflect assertions in Bataille’s philosophical works that the bodily should take precedence over vision. Ziółkowski is a fitting illustrator of this tale, which has become one of the most notorious works of philosophical obscenity since the Marquis de Sade. Equating the act of seeing with desire itself, the violence enacted in Ziółkowski’s Story of the Eye can be seen as an attack of pornographic and forbidden images against all forms of censorship.