One hour of suffering

"These works are consisting of a body, plaster and paint. External beauty constrasts with internal physical suffering. They are ephemeral - they only last for one hour." - Marek Sulek, The Artist.

Remember that plaster encased girl in the gallery in Paint, Sweat and Tears? It was living statue by Marek Sulek. Years ago his works were always a strong accent in the life of deactivated FBF group on Yahoo and its Tumblr profile. Recent years the Polish artist was apparently taking a break from turning his models into stone. Instead, he did many other works, but none of them would make a career on this blog. Luckily, this year Mr. Sulek renewed his idea of so-called disposal statues:

September 2020. Warsaw, Poland. The model is Dagmara Brodziak.
Photos by Jarek Sadkowski.

The women who volunteered to be a disposable statue are stripped naked, painted from head to toe, encased in plaster shell and then exposed to public as an ordinary material thing. Model is put into position of helpless object, unable to react or at least hide her nudity from prying eyes. Her existence, both as piece of art and human being, is at the mercy of her creator. The art is alive as long as the artist want to. Encased woman has nothing else to do than wait in her situation, uncomfortable both physically and mentally. Maybe body and intimacy isn't her greatest contribution to the role but the patience and suffering is? Does the turning into piece of art exalts her, or she's just used, objectificated and degraded in some way?  Maybe some of those models do enjoy their role? Maybe?

Anyway, it's good to see those blue painted, plastered girls again! Personally, because of my interests I perceive them as a some kind of border, or rather flawless transition between art and fetish. A some kind of dark side in erotic art, where pure art merge with dark fetish and dark fetish merge with pure art. A darker side of erotica. Something this blog is about.   

Apart from the piece above, the last known living statue was shown to public in 2004. If you followed Female Body Fetish on Tumblr, you've probably seen it already. But there were much more such expositions in the past - in Poland, rest of Europe and USA. Maybe more than you'd expect. I tried to review the most interesting of them:

Tarnow, Poland. Opening of photography and sculpture exposition in 2004.

"Madonna from Brooklyn". New York 2002.

Streets of Warsaw, 2020.

Brantenbjerg Gallery. Denmark, 2001.

"Natural environment". Coast of Poland, 2001.

Gdynia Film Festival. Poland, 2000.

The Hague, 1999.

"Natural environment". Poland, 1999.

Swierzewski Studio, Warsaw, 1998 (?)

Swierzewski Studio. Warsaw, 1998. 
"...a some kind of border, or rather flawless transition between art and fetish." Talk about it.

Being a disposable statue requires a lot of sacrifice from the model. As it is said, the exposition takes about one hour. But what about preparations and releasing afterwards? We can suppose the dismantling of statues can be a problem, considering the poses and amount of plaster covering some of the girls. By the way I always wanted to know, who those models are. Despite the mentioned Brodziak, I've learned that the artist's woman modelled for at least for one of his work ("Natural environment". Poland, 1999). Later she gived a press interview about her own artistic activities and mentioned that fact. But the other brave girls are anonymous, unfortunately. I suppose many of them are not a professional models, rather an amateur volunteers. I remember, years ago there was a brief coverage from one of the events in some TV. Now it's nowhere to find, but it shown the creating of statue during performance. Already painted model was lying down on the podium, while Marek Sulek was gradually covering her with plaster. That was in some gallery in front of spectators. It would be great to see some documentary movie featuring behind the scenes and interviewing the models about their feelings of being treated this way... 

Bruselles, Belgium, 1998.

Warsaw, 1998

Centre of Polish Sculpture in Oronsko. Poland, 1998.

"Urban space". Delft, Netherlands, 1997.

Love how the artist operates with plaster to dose the nudity of his models: They can be fully covered (thus heavy encased), topless or have their intimate parts barely hidden (e.g. the last pic). Or contrarily, like in Warsaw 1998 picture, where girl is shamelessly stripped, with hands and legs encased to the wall. Helpless and vulnerable, she can do nothing at all to cover her frontal nudity. This particular picture reminds fetish torture, and is somehow darker than other works of Marek Sulek (indeed, there is an old porn movie, where man cemented his girlfiend in the wall!). These things can turn the imagination on! Going that way I can imagine a work, where the model's limbs and head would be encased, leaving only her naked and painted torso sticking out from the solid mass. Enough! 

Pulchri Studio, The Hague.

Apert Gallery. Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1995.
Magic: In the backround there's a picture from 1998...

While works of Mr. Sulek, even with that erotic vibes are still just another kind of art. But some of them, as you could see, are descending into rather kinky regions. And this makes his artworks so beautiful...

More posts including plaster encasement and cement experiments:

CANDLE BOXXX IN CEMENT
PURE PAINT - EMANATION OF FANTASIES
BODY AND CEMENT - SHOW UNLIKE ANY OTHER

FACES AND BODIES - with more links in the article

ENCASING THE BEAUTY
WHICH ONE DISTURBES YOU THE MOST

... and of course, the mentioned PAINT, SWEAT AND... TEARS.