PIOTR UKLANSKI b. 1968 Dance floor, 1997 &spade

Provenance
Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan

Exhibited
Bremen, Neues Muesuem Weserburg, October 11, 1998 – January 3, 1999; Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1999; Santiago de Compostela, Spain, Centro Galeo de Arte Contemporanea, 1999; Kyoto, The National Museum of Modern Art, 2001; Chiba, City Museum of Modern Art, 2001; Fukuoka, City Museum of Modern Art, 2001; Seoul, National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001, Minimal Maximal (exhibition copy exhibited); Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, February 12 – April 30, 2000; Portland Art Museum (Oregon), July – September, 2000; Paris, Musée national d'art moderne, Centres Georges Pompidou, November – December, 2000 (presented as Sons et lumières); Mexico City, Museo Rufino Tamayo, June – August, 2001; Miami Art Museum, September – November, 2001; Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasures, no. 67, p. 6 (exhibition copy exhibited; illustrated)

Literature
K. Jacobson, ed., Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasures, New York, 2000, no. 67, p. 6 (another example illustrated); K. Bush, "Once Upon A Time in the East: The Art of Piotr Uklanski" ARTFORUM, November 2002; P. Uklanski and R. Biuro, eds, Piotr Ukla?ski: Earth Wind and Fire, Ostfildern-Ruit, Basel, 2004, p. 43 (another example illustrated)

Piotr Ulka?ski's Dance Floor, 1997 is a work whose meaning lies within the mind of the spectator. "His signature piece, the sound-interactive, light-pulsating Dance Floor, conjoined the formality of the modernist grid and the aesthetics of a Saturday night disco and might initially be viewed as a one-liner at Minimalism's expense. Ultimately though, the sculpture is more concerned with its audience than with its art history: a work of art entirely premised on and activated by people, who in turn interact with one another on it. By night the floor throngs with DJs and dancers; by day, shoe scuffed and cigarette littered, it dissipates in to a wan and slightly sordid surface, as melancholy as any morning after. Endlessly flexible, the floor has functioned in many different social contexts—in the Museum of Modern Art in New York's Sculpture Garden, in numerous gallery spaces, in an office worker's canteen. As Ukla?ski observed in the MOMA exhibition catalogue, he aimed to create an object 'that would be all generosity and no ideology. An object that would give and give but that would, at the end of the night, be unknowable, as its true nature resides in our own pleasure,'" (K. Bush, "Once Upon a Time in the East: The art of Piotr Ukla?ski", ArtForum, November, 2002).