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Windy City Times, June 7, 1990
Artspace
By Roly Chang Barrero
"Amazing Grace: Joe Ziolkowski" at Catherine Edelman Gallery,
300 West Superior Street, showing through June 30, is truly an homage to
male sexuality. Joe Ziolkowski's 24 new works celebrate the male body and
expose a sensitivity and understanding of male vulnerability seldom seen.
The elegant and graceful poses set against white background of virtually
empty space allow us the luxury of contemplation; the spectacle of the male
gaze on another man's beauty. Ziolkowski allows us to break out of the
bourgeois taboos which restricts our adulation, our contemplation, and understanding
of each other. He blatantly confronts us with ourselves, our bodies. He
successfully rekindles his relationship with the ghosts of his censors,
without shock, disrespect or confrontation. Ziolkowski has mastered the
art as well as the Artsworld.
Ziolkowski's classical and academic styles thrusts us back to the Greek
Classical period. His models, well toned and innocent, reflect the grandeur
and virility of the Kritios Boy. While Ziolkowski's "Walking the Line"
shows some reference to Myron's "Discobolos" in its strong expression
of concentrated force, "Burden" captures the complex relationship
between positive and negative space as proficiently as Boethos did with
"Boy Strangling a Goose." Clearly Ziolkowski is not romanticizing
the Greek, he is simply making use of all its strengths: composition, style,
and elegance.
To dismiss Ziolkowski's works as mere studies of Greek history would
be as shallow and naive as Jesse Helms' ignorant attempt to reduce Robert
Mapplethorpe's work to pornography. Ziolkowski's soft core references to
erotica as disengaged with his titles which address the psyche, not necessarily
the libido. True enough, both artists' works are examples of a sensibility
that is generally attributed to George Platt-Lynes, insomuch as all three
studied the male as form, as cognitive being and as complex members of society.
All of them also acknowledged the invisibility of the male nude in contemporary
art, hence they have attempted to fill a gap which has stood void too long.
One of Oscar Wilde's favorite quotes can easily be used to sum up the
need for Ziolkowski's work when he wrote "All art is at once surface
and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those
who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not
life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art
shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
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