Wednesday evening I attended the opening of Kasia Ozga’s exhibit at the Fondation des Etats-Unis. The major motifs of the exhibit, as you can see from my photos, were rope and body parts — mostly hands, feet, and fingers.

I highly recommend reading Ozga’s own artist’s statement about her works, because she has a lot of interesting things to say about fractured identities and anti-commodification. But for me, the pieces had an almost fetishistic, horror-movie aesthetic to them that I found pretty intriguing.

Rope, for example — of course it can be just an ordinary tool, but in the context of the human body, it’s hard not to think of it as a vehicle for torture, murder, or suicide.  The repeated images of ropes joined to dismembered extremities brought to mind the creepy experiments/fantasies of a serial killer — something like the skin and bone art featured in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  I couldn't help imagining the people to whom these appendages might once have belonged -- what violence did they encounter that brought them to this state?

In one of the photos, you can see a broken hand sculpture -- in truth, it only broke because someone accidentally knocked it over. Still, I felt the damaged piece played nicely into my imagined theme — another echo of the torture motif.  

I think we'll be seeing a lot more from Ms. Ozga in the future -- I'm all for art that makes you think, but there's something even more compelling about art that makes you shudder.  

More pictures are available here and on Ozga’s website.