The Objects of Being

The attitude of Konrad Kuzyszyn to the body is, to an effect, similar to that of the European Renaissance artists. However, whilst the common trait lies in seeing the body as a sacrum, the early modern cognitive passion is in Kuzyszyn’s work replaced by the mysticism of experiencing the body. Hence in many of the artist’s projects, we are dealing not so much with the body in the material sense, but with its images, rendered unreal.

In almost all of the artist’s installations, light – identified with life – plays a very important role. Though devoid of a symbolic meaning, it does assign one to the images of the body, referring to what lies hidden behind them. In The Objects of Being, Kuzyszyn has used photographs of different parts of a female body submerged in an illuminated transparent substance. A tangle of cables comes out of the small objects closed in the medical cabinet. The inescapable association the sight evokes is that of a bundle of veins and nerves – the Cartesian concept of the human body as a machine. Kuzyszyn places his deliberations about the body in the context of medicine. It is medicine that provides ever better tools for learning about the body. It is also due to medicine that we can experience instances of enchantment with its mystery.

The installation very clearly shows that the artist is more interested in the soul out of the body-soul dyad. The focus of his deliberations is thus shifted towards existential issues. Kuzyszyn does not show the body in its entirety but as collations of its small fragments. The single images do not refer to the physical unity of the matter but, guided by internal light, steer towards the psyche. The shattered body is often a manifestation of a shattered soul, a disintegrated identity. The incorrectly assembled fragments are the expression of existential uncertainty, fear of the strange one, the Other inside oneself. Finally, it is the fear of what is final. The body is a medium helping one to experience the world and define one’s identity. Kuzyszyn uses his ascetic installation to study the human condition, revealing both the shortcomings of the Cartesian duality of the soul and the body, as well as the groundlessness of the Christian apotheosis of the soul, and the postmodern isolation of the body.

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