To Exalt the Ephemeral: Alina Szapocznikow, 1962-1972

Book excerpt: Sensuality and abjection in the sculpture of an artist who expressed the female experience unapologetically and presciently This catalog considers the pivotal turning points in the Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow's (1926-73) life and career from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It considers her experimental approach to materials, ranging from plaster and bronze to her groundbreaking use of polyester resin in the mid-1960s. Szapocznikow's work maps her engagement with her own body as it transformed from healthy to ailing. Her art amounts to a powerful meditation on what she once described as "a fleeting instant, a trivial instant ... our terrestrial passage." These sensual casts and sculptures of body parts are ecstatic and abject, playful and disturbing, direct and elusive. Unapologetic in their expression of the female experience, including that of terminal illness, Szapocznikow's works remain hauntingly relevant today. Featuring new photography, the publication aims to render the tactility and spatiality of these works in brilliant new detail.