Maurycy Gomulicki - Bibliophilia

An exhibition of 14 photographs extends the connotations of the library as a meeting point of the mind and the senses

Maurycy Gomulicki's photographs revolve around the theme of pleasure, exposing the artist's fascination with the body - the female form in particular, as well as literature and film. Gomulicki expands on his interest in literature, which sparked during the artist's childhood years - his great grandfather Wiktor was a poet, novelist and the first translator of Baudelaire. His grandfather Juliusz Wiktor was a passionate researcher of literature. The project carries the intellectual stimulation of literature over to the realm of the flesh.

Maurycy Gomulicki's depiction of his female subjects wavers between ogling and idolatry. These girls are obviously young, but they also carry a womanly confidence and sophistication that shifts their role from mere object of desire to a manifestation of the essence of femininity - a woman who is in control of the viewer. Through an absurd presentation of books as an object of desire, the artist may well boost the popularity of the medium in the unforgiving digital era. There is a double dose of objectification - through the subject of the woman and the book itself, held up as a commodity touted by the desirable female.

Gomulicki's intentions go even deeper, as he explains:

The entire project revolves around my grandfather, Juliusz Wiktor Gomulicki, and his book collection - the library of a humanist and a wayward spirit, an aficionado of curiosities and a ladies man. Books were truly the backdrop of my childhood - for the first six years of my life, I lived in a place floor-to-ceiling piled chockablock with books, often in double rows. For the next thirty-something, I was an almost daily visitor there. I treat a library as a source and as a backdrop to let my imagination roam; as a place of manifold initiations. The smell of dust and the daydreaming about girls coexist perfectly in my consciousness. To this day, whenever I look at pornographic photographs with books in the background, I find myself deciphering the titles visible along the shelves, instead of concentrating on the ecstatically writhing bodies. Books are not only the knowledge contained therein - for me, they are above all a source of pleasure. The books and women in my life have become as much the triggers for my fantasies as the conduits of their fulfillment. My life story is full of women writers and women readers.

For more information, see: www.mocak.com.pl

Source: Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków