Untitled 2001

Curator: The starkness of this drawing, Untitled from 2001 by Zdzislaw Beksinski, hits me immediately. The almost skeletal representation...it's haunting. Editor: Haunting is right. There's an unsettling fragility, yet also a looming, almost brutal presence in that depiction. It’s unsettling, makes you consider exploitation of animals and animal commodification. Curator: Yes! I’m interested by your point, considering the artist's body of work often deals with dark and unsettling subject matter. But the subject itself–the bovine form rendered in ink and graphite. It almost appears caged by its own body, that criss-cross pattern like psychic scars over the animal. Editor: Scars indeed. It raises issues of forced containment and how our relationship with food systems and capitalism as forms of confinement also. You can see the marks—what’s projected and placed onto them. Curator: Absolutely, there's a heavy psychological weight embedded in such representation. It invites us to consider themes around industrialisation, and exploitation, beyond surface level depictions. Editor: And look at those legs - they're disproportionately long. It creates this feeling of precarity, which ties to industrial agriculture and its effects on animal wellbeing. They exist suspended and unsupported— a kind of metaphor for its unsustainable nature. Curator: I see them as pillars, perhaps upholding something on the verge of collapse. Beksinski’s commitment to form and the emotional experience evokes the same sense of despair when engaging in unsustainable industries that contribute to global instability. It can create an apocalyptic sense of looming anxiety that the artist successfully represents. Editor: What does endure when facing our participation within such an industrial system? That could also lead us down an activist path. But if we reconsidered such issues within such artistic vision, could a new kind of symbol come of it? Curator: Maybe the artist hints toward what an image could communicate. An open ending that continues, perhaps. Editor: Maybe indeed. It invites a contemplation on what images might reveal on broader social issues for its audience.