Piotr Uklański

One of his early works, The Nazis (1999), was shown at The Photographers' Gallery in London and lead to controversy as it displayed photographs of actors who had portrayed Nazis in film. Several works from the collection were destroyed and the exhibition was closed down.

The style of Uklański's work is as wide-ranging as his use of materials. His work has challenged societal views on death and sex, and also often explores political movements as they intersect with society and media. An example is his work, The Nazis (1998), in which he displays movie stills of well-known actors playing Nazis, with color and contrast changes in the style of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) 1967. In his 2015 exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklański Photographs, and Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklański Selects from the Met Collection, Uklański's styles were distinct both in his own work, and through the generally shocking choices of photographs he collected from the museum's archives. Some of his pieces, like Untitled (Dance Floor) 1996 and Untitled (The Nazis) 1998 are clean and neat, whereas others like Untitled (Story of the Eye) 2013 are messy, overflowing, or frayed. One of his sculptures, Untitled (Polonia) (2005), is minimalist but monumental, made of glass, and stands as a response to a political event.

Created in 1998, this was an exhibition of 164 color photographs of Polish and other foreign actors who played Nazis in film. The point of this collection, according to Uklański, is to question how the attractive actors seduce the viewer and blind them to the truth about the evil and ruthlessness of Nazism.

Uklański uses unconventional materials by weaving them together or finding other means to adhere them to each other or to canvas. He has attempted work by "painting without a brush" using oil and canvas. Untitled (Dance Floor) 1996 is a functioning floor composed of sound-activated boxes which light up, reminiscent of a minimalist grid and disco dancefloor.

Created in 1996, this installation piece is composed of glass, an aluminum-raised floor structure and computer-controlled LED and sound system. It is a fully functioning disco dance floor with synchronized music. It creates an atmosphere for social interaction where the viewers complete the piece. Uklański stated that he wanted to create a work whose goal was to give the viewer pleasure.

Piotr Uklański is from Warsaw, Poland, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts. He later moved to New York where he studied photography at Cooper Union and received his Masters in Fine Arts in 1995 When he first arrived in New York, he explains how he first became interested in photography,

Uklański's long running project takes well known photography subjects such as landscapes, flora, etc, which were included in the project's namesake, Eastman Kodak's 1991 guidebook for photography, and "explores clichés of popular photography using the kitschy subjects and hackneyed effects" to "provide witty commentary—from a European perspective—on how Americans approach even their moments of pleasure as forms of work and self-improvement."

Piotr Uklański (born 1968) is a contemporary Polish-American artist who has produced art since the mid 1990s which have explored themes of spectacle, cliche, and tropes of modern art. Many of his pieces and projects take well-known, overused, sometimes sentimental subjects and tropes and both embraces and subverts them. Untitled (Dance Floor) (1996) is one of his best known works which took a minimalist grid floor in the gallery and developed it into a disco dance floor activated with sound and lit with bright colors. His works have been featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.