I will write in the first person, but I want to make it clear that I’m not the painter. This text about the series with its recurring motif of red high heels grew out of many hours of conversation. The discussion was so intimate, and at times so melancholy, that phrases like ‘the artist remembers that...’ or ‘Pieniak considers painting to be...’ felt artificial. In the paintings made from 2023 onwards, the crowd has thinned out and the style of painting has changed. They are all self-portraits. But let us take it step by step. I think we all have memories of sneaking into our parents’ clothes, of catching our breath, of the first experience of awakened sexuality and the guilt that comes with it. The high heels I dug out of my mother’s wardrobe I called ‘big toe shoes’. Being caught wearing them was another reason to mock the little poof. Let’s jump ahead in time now. There’s no need to go into detail here. Most people recognise that childhood can be anything but carefree. Teenagers are all too often cruel, and even family photos can make you look awful.​

 

It was 2023 when I ordered my own pair, and when I put them on for the first time, my whole body went numb for a solid few minutes. That was when all the traumas came to the fore; the insults and ridicule, the orders telling me to define myself. Then it all passed. It occurred to me that as a mature person in therapy, fighting all this crap, I could strut around in them wherever I damn well pleased. Contrary to what most people may think, high heels are not a fetish, but a strange embodiment of trauma and 

liberation. Nothing to do with sex at all.

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This item of clothing, which forced me to confront my past and in which, it turned out, I could even do the dishes, helped me to redefine the masculinity that had been ingrained in me since childhood. Then I started photographing myself in them, getting comfortable with being different and unattached. Next I started painting. Differently, because now in relation to myself. Before, I feared this state and treated it as a substitute for being in a relationship with someone else. I managed to preserve what was left of my mental health by embracing all my faces through painting. The studio was a safe haven. A world without judgement, violence or sticking your nose in someone else’s shit.

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Painting is a form of sublimation. That’s why in my first works I depicted a single figure, either curled up or with its bottom sticking out. One could perhaps detect a faint sense of disappointment after failed sex, mulling it over just after the lover has closed the door. Or the scent of spent satisfaction, achieved on one’s own terms. The paintings that follow become more ‘externalised’. The poses grow bolder. The figures begin to wear fishnets and engage in interactions. I opened myself up to being immersed in the process. Watching where it leads feels like the dopamine rush of sex. Or like being drunk. Painting offers a pure, almost therapeutic perspective. Without constraints or pauses for reflection. It’s when I let out a ton of emotions and memories. Painting is all about staying with the problem.

It’s a tool to help you survive. When I paint, I create my own world. Beyond the social context. Within it, I normalise non-heteronormativity. Essentially, we function in an art world where only a small percentage of works directly address queer issues. Now I’m painting what I couldn’t paint at home. There, I was always afraid of the audience’s reaction and ostracism. Because they’d think it was perverse. It didn’t matter if the bodies were male or female.

The voice in my head echoed my mother’s words: ‘all you do is paint naked asses’.​​

 

In the past, standing in front of a blank canvas would fill me with fear. Such feelings blocked the process of painting. I suppose there is a fine line between an artist and a neurotic. And the painting works by itself. It’s a good starting point for exposing yourself. We talk too little about homosexuality, sex, alcoholism, disorders and depression. I’m coming out with these topics. I always paint for myself. I spill my guts. I want to demystify all these issues in my paintings. To let viewers facing similar problems know that there is someone like them out there.

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I see painting as a source of issues to work through, but also as a therapy in itself, which involves digging up layers of deeply buried repressed memories that are difficult to put into words. In this way they can be tamed and later painstakingly refined. To squeeze out the heavy emotions, but also to find love for oneself. 

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curator and author of the text: Katarzyna Piskorz 

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Grzegorz Pieniak (b. 1994, Olsztyn)

 

Studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

He was a co-founder of the Otwarta Pracownia Eksperymentu and the Kaplica Gallery, alongside such artists as Piotr Wesołowski, Agata Słowak and Szaweł Płóciennik.

 

He has presented his works in solo exhibitions: Tenderness, Borowik Foundation (2023), Takotsubo (with Zuzanna Janin), Dzielna Foundation (2023), Grzegorz Pieniak, Painting, Kaplica Gallery (2017), Self-Portraits, Kaplica Gallery (2016) and group exhibitions: Refugees Welcome, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2023), Sensitivity of the Outcast, lokal_30 (2023), Exhibition of the Experimental Textile Studio, Bardzo Biała Gallery, (2018), A c é p h a l e, Kaplica Gallery (2018), R3INKARNACJE, Kaplica Gallery (2016).

 

His works are in numerous private collections.

He lives and works in Warsaw.