Transplatation

Grzegorz Marszałek

  • type of object: print
  • date: 1976
  • material/technique: offset print on paper
  • dimensions: 32 x 42 cm
  • inventory No.: G-1112
  • image licensed under: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Grzegorz Marszałek’s works reference the face transplant — one of the
most difficult medical procedures. The works were created after his
return from Paris, where the artist, as a holder of a French government
scholarship, studied at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.
In one of them, a glove is the tissue of the new face of a man who underwent
a transplant, and the effect resembles a dog’s head. In the second work,
the transplant led to the modelling of a man’s face from two different halves.
Both these hybrid depictions of the body, combining elements of various
orders, take up the problem of identity, of how people perceive themselves
and how they want to be perceived by others. The theme of the self-portrait
here refers in a universal way to the imagining and representation of oneself
by others, the creation of new images and thus the departure from the old
identity, ‘fixed’ by time and memory. ‘There is no escape from the mug,
other than into another mug’, Witold Gombrowicz wrote in Ferdydurke.
This quotation, in reference to Marszałek’s Transplantations illustrates
the mechanism of acquiring a new ‘self’.

Michał Jachuła

 

Other works by artist in the Zachęta collection

  • Zdjęcie pracy Exit nr 2
    Exit nr 2 Grzegorz Marszałek1975
  • Zdjęcie pracy Transplatation 1
    Transplatation 1Grzegorz Marszałek1976
  • Zdjęcie pracy Transplatation 2
    Transplatation 2Grzegorz Marszałek1976
  • Zdjęcie pracy Right profile
    Right profileGrzegorz Marszałek1976
  • Zdjęcie pracy Left profile
    Left profileGrzegorz Marszałek1976
  • Zdjęcie pracy En face
    En faceGrzegorz Marszałek1976
  • Zdjęcie pracy Analysis 1
    Analysis 1Grzegorz Marszałek1976
  • Zdjęcie pracy Analysis 1
    Analysis 1Grzegorz Marszałek1976
  • Zdjęcie pracy A glove of the professional winner
    A glove of the professional winnerGrzegorz Marszałek1976

Other works from this category

  • Zdjęcie pracy Discovery IV
    Discovery IVRyszard Otręba1975
  • Zdjęcie pracy
    Andrzej Kabała1979
  • Zdjęcie pracy Baba nieborowska
    Baba nieborowskaKrystyna Bieniek1963