Krzysztof Jung (11 July 1951 in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

– 5 October 1998 in Warsaw) was a Polish

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

, graphic artist, performer, teacher and creator of the conception of the Plastic Theatre.

Life

Studied at the Faculty of Interior Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1971-76. In 1978-79, he ran the neo-avant-garde Repassage gallery, which promoted

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

. He was involved in the first period of Polish performance art. Despite government

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

, his performances as well as his drawings and paintings, which treated

homoerotic Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be temporary, whereas "homose ...

themes, helped to open the way for

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

art in Poland. In his capacity as teacher and gallery manager he attracted a group of artists and intellectuals who audaciously addressed the issue of both political and sexual freedom in art. In 1983, under the influence of writer

Wojciech Karpiński Wojciech Karpiński (11 May 1943 – 18 August 2020) was a Polish writer, historian of ideas and literary critic. Life Wojciech Karpiński was born on 11 May 1943 in Warsaw, the son of the architect Zbigniew Karpiński and a grandson of ...

and after getting to know painter Józef Czapski in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, he focused on painting. He was mainly interested in landscapes, paintings with strong, saturated colours, to which he also gave symbolic meaning. Beginning in 1988 he published pencil portraits of prominent writers including Józef Czapski,

Joseph Brodsky Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; russian: link=no, Иосиф Александрович Бродский ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1940, ...

Zbigniew Herbert Zbigniew Herbert (; 29 October 1924 – 28 July 1998) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. He is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950s (a volume title ...

, Konstanty Jeleński,

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz (, also , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation ...

and

James Merrill James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995) was an American poet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1977 for ''Divine Comedies.'' His poetry falls into two distinct bodies of work: the polished and formalist lyri ...

for the literary journal ''Zeszyty Literackie'' newly created in Paris. He died from

asthma Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, cou ...

in 1998.

Art and concept of the Plastic Theatre

The most distinctive aspect of Krzysztof Jung's work and performances was his conception of the Plastic Theatre, threading: wrapping thread around persons, objects and rooms. He first applied it in his master's degree project The Visual and ''Non-Visual Aspects of Space'' (1976). It consisted of the environment of the threaded space and of the performance, a naked man sitting on a chair freeing himself of the 'cocoon' in which the artist has entangled him. A triptych made in March 1978 in the Repassage gallery is the best example of Jung's threadings. It consisted of the environment, ''Chair'', a chair frame suspended right above the floor on an irregular net woven from thin thread, and two performances, ''Transformation'' and ''Love''. The idea behind the conception of the Plastic Theatre was searching for a shared, visual and at the same time sensuous equivalent of the sensual experience. As Paweł Leszkowicz wrote: 'The central place in the Polish artistic and homoerotic masculinity in the Polish art under communism belongs to Krzysztof Jung, whom the artist Grzegorz Kowalski considered to be the pioneer of the body art that dominated Polish art in the 1990s. I consider him to be also the precursor of 'homosexual art', i.e. the art that enters new regions of sexuality and sensuality that aims at opening masculinity. Krzysztof Jung, who died from asthma in 1998, would be the precursor of Polish queer art.' During his time at Repassage Jung also organized street

happening A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...

s, which critiqued the surrounding social and political reality. His other focus was painting and drawing. Already as a student, Jung never stopped drawing. In the 1970s he drew series of stylized, perfectionistically detailed images of insects, erotic themes and scenes inspired by literature (including Kafka's ''Metamorphosis''). In the 1980s he was also inspired by his many trips across

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, as

wrote: 'At that time, he had only just turned back to classic forms of artistic expression from a period of extremely modern activities. He painted a series of splendid landscapes influenced by Józef Czapski's paintings. He needed to renew himself and to strengthen his language, to make it possible to engage in a creative dialogue with the world.'Wojciech Karpiński, ''Reading Nicola Chiaromonte'', in: W. Karpiński, ''Faces'', Warsaw, 2012. After Jung's death, solo exhibitions of his work were held at the National Museum in Warsaw (1999), the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2016), Bibliothèque Polonaise in

(2017) and

Schwules Museum The Schwules Museum (English: Gay Museum) in Berlin, Germany, is a museum and research centre with collections focusing on LGBTQ+ history and culture. It opened in 1985 and it was the first museum in the world dedicated to gay history. The muse ...

in Berlin (2019).

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions and individual events

* 1974 - exhibition at 44 Aleje Jerozolimskie, Warsaw * 1976 - ''The visual and non-visual aspects of space'' - Repassage gallery, Warsaw * 1977 - ''Public entanglement of space'' - Repassage gallery, Warsaw * 1978 - ''Two red ones, or a spatial poem about the regime'' - Repassage 2 gallery, Warsaw * 1979 - ''Responsibility'' - action at the main gate of the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

; Cocooning performance - Repassage 2 gallery, Warsaw * 1980 - ''Conversation performance'' - Re'Repassage gallery, Warsaw; Creating through others and a horizon of freedom - Re'Repassage gallery, Warsaw * 1981 - Still-life action - Re'Repassage gallery, Warsaw * 1982 - ''Instruct me, and I will be quiet, and show me where I have erred performance'' - Barbara and Wiktor Gutts' studio, Warsaw; ''Caprichos XIII - The sleep of reason produces monsters performance'' - Barbara and Wiktor Gutts' studio, Warsaw * 1989 - ''Paradise'' - Dziekanka gallery, Warsaw; 'Trees at the centre of the world' - Pokaz gallery, Warsaw * 1992 - ''Landscape with Saint Sebastian'' - Dziekanka gallery, Warsaw * 1999 - ''Krzysztof Jung 1951-1998'' - posthumous exhibition at the Xawery Dunikowski Collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw * 2016 - ''Krzysztof Jung: Metamorphosis'', Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw * 2017 - ''Krzysztof Jung: Trees and faces'', Bibliothèque Polonaise, Paris * 2019 - ''Krzysztof Jung: Zeichnungen , Drawings'',

, Berlin

Selected group exhibitions

* 1978 - Seventh Festival of the Fine Arts - Warsaw * 1979 - ''Eroticism'' - House of the Artist, Warsaw; Documentation of selected actions 1977-79 - Repassage 2 gallery, Warsaw * 1980 - ''All-Poland Confrontations, art by young people'', Art Propaganda Centre, Łódź; Unpublished catalogue. Show of 1974-80 documentation - Re'Repassage gallery, Warsaw * 1989 - ''Pole German Russian'' - Zakłady Norblina, Warsaw * 1993 - ''Sigma. Galeria. Repassage. Repassage 2, Re'Repassage'' -

Zachęta National Gallery of Art The Zachęta National Gallery of Art (Polish: ''Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki'') is a contemporary art museum in the center of Warsaw, Poland. The Gallery's chief purpose is to present and support Polish contemporary art and artists. With numero ...

, Warsaw * 1997 - ''CARTOGRAPHERS. GEO-GNOSTIC PROJECTION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY'' - Zagreb, Croatia; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (1998); Budapest, Hungary (1998); Maribor, Slovenia (1998) * 2010 - ''Ars HomoErotica'' - National Museum in Warsaw.

Bibliography

* ''Krzysztof Jung''. Catalog of the exhibition edited by Grzegorz Kowalski and Maryla Sitkowska, Warsaw 2001 * ''Krzysztof Jung. The Male Nude , Der männliche Akt'', Berlin 2019 * ''Krzysztof Jung : Peintures, dessins, photographies.'' Edited by

, Paris 2017 * ''Krzysztof Jung : Metamorphosis.'' Catalog of the exhibition edited by Katarzyna Urbańska, Warsaw 2016 * Paweł Leszkowicz, ''Art pride : gay art from Poland'', Warsaw 2010 * Paweł Leszkowicz, ''Male nude : Naked Man in Polish Art after 1945'', Poznań 2012

Filmography

* Biographical film ''Imago of Krzyś'' directed by Adam Janisch and Barbara Janisch, Berlin 2016

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jung, Krzysztof Polish erotic artists Polish gay artists Polish LGBT painters Gay painters 20th-century Polish painters 20th-century Polish male artists 1951 births 1998 deaths Deaths from asthma Polish male painters 20th-century Polish LGBT people