Natalia ist sex Installation image

A photographic installation that blurs the boundary between writing and image. Every letter of the title is a separately framed work made of a few or a dozen or so images showing the intimate relations of Natalia and Andrzej Lachowicz, one of the most tempestuous couples of Polish conceptual artists. In accordance with the German title: Natalia ist sex, the bold erotic photos (close-ups of genitals and bodies in erotic fervour, inspired by pornographic aesthetics) record what they represent. Considered against the expansion of the English language in the arts in the 1970s, the use of German may be seen as an attempt to emphasize the local tradition (the artists live in Wrocław). [A. Markowska]

A photographic installation that blurs the boundary between writing and image. Every letter of the title is a separately framed work made of a few or a dozen or so images showing the intimate relations of Natalia and Andrzej Lachowicz, one of the most tempestuous couples of Polish conceptual artists. In accordance with the German title: Natalia ist sex, the bold erotic photos (close-ups of genitals and bodies in erotic fervour, inspired by pornographic aesthetics) record what they represent. Considered against the expansion of the English language in the arts in the 1970s, the use of German may be seen as an attempt to emphasize the local tradition (the artists live in Wrocław).
In contrast to many other erotic photographs by the artist in which she used nude female models, the photos in Natalia ist sex record the performance of the artist and her partner. The pioneering balancing between the nude (the so-called “high art”) and pornography and peep show (something obscene and low); the decisive turn to the so-called new media (abandonment of painting); and the act of making the intellectual and cold conceptual art corporeal secured an important place in the history of Polish art for the artist. Paweł Leszkowicz claimed that she unmasked “the decorative and patriarchal nature of eroticism in the so-called photo-media activities,” revealing their hypocrisy. Similarly, Łukasz Ronduda emphasized the sensual character of her conceptualism, and also noted that in Permafo (1970-1981), the gallery run by the couple, they introduced the rule of combining the exhibition of artists’ works with the presentation of their photographic image. The photography of Natalia LL not only records and shows, but – through its permanent use – penetrates life.
The feminist interpretation by Małgorzata Jankowska connects Natalia ist sex with the later work of the artist, Transfiguration of Odin I (2009), where she presented her ex-husband and lover as an omnipotent, but elderly naked god, with marked signs of old age and tiredness. In this configuration, it was Natalia LL who retained, or even took over the power from her partner, and who ruled, conscious of her erotic energy and of the passing of time, which she manages to stop by her art. [A. Markowska]