WET PAINT

Those who prefer order, predictability and feel discomfort when met with ambiguity, may feel confusion toward the operatic photographs that are ostentatiously bright and garish, playing with BDSM toys, pop culture, and mythology. And the questions that such viewers ask themselves will probably go unanswered. Called the third great sensibility in art history (after classicism and avant-garde), camp-like humor - is characterized by arbitrariness. It is like a joke: its limits are undefined: some will laugh, others will not.

Formal dissonance, categorical contradiction, and finally cognitive confusion (what are we watching?). All these sensations, experiences, and effects occur upon the first contact with Studio Prokopiou publication. The cogitation that comes later complicates things even more - not only the interpretation, but also our communication with the works of art, for which a sense of taste developed in the course of education should prepare us for, familiar scenarios of experiencing artistry, cultural competencies and, later, a hierarchy of value stated in culture.
And they all invert - or at least become unsteady - in contact with camp. So we approach these photographs unarmed, our defense mechanisms turn out to be useless, and our education or cultural background is insufficient. Here we watch and talk about these works at our own risk, knowing that our evaluative reception may be considered a failure, and we are slapstick fans or ordinary barbarians.

And finally: is it a devastation of Greek culture - as dangerous as a smoker in an archive? Or a relaunch of monuments (of our imagination) that threatens the death of the restorer? Jokes about academism, classicism, and mannerism? Or maybe an artistic oscillation on the axis of life and death? Everything and much more is happening in the Studio Prokopiou book. All the associations that you would like to avert are justified. And if you are unsure whether the symbols (stigmas, incompleteness, poses, colors) are taken seriously and criticized here (mythology is not politically neutral), or is it just a trick - that’s good. Because camp is a kind of
love, it is tender, it is critical, it is uncritically affectionate. It is engaged, it is the sum of the
differences between the internal and the external. It is a kind of sensibility, it is exaggerated, shameless, transgressive, amoral, marginal, inspirational, irritating, it is innocence, it is the loss of innocence.

photography: Studio Prokopiou
[Panagiotis Poimenidis & Phillip Prokopiou]
book design: Agata Bartkowiak
colour proofing and prepress: Krzysztof Krzysztofiak
curatorial work: Łukasz Rusznica
texts: Frater Acher, Donovan Greeff, Anka Herbut, Lauren John Joseph, Hugh Nianias, Daniel Orrells, Alexandra Saliba, Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało
English translation: Marek Kazmierski, Aleksandra Szymczyk
line editing: Marek Kazmierski
proofreading: Donovan Greeff
administrative coordinator: Joanna Kot
coordinator of the editorial office: Joanna Sokalska
printing and binding: Argraf, Warsaw
printed on paper: GardaPat 13 KLASSICA 135 g/m2, Burano Pink 120 g/m2
typeset: Change, Fautive, Lazarus
binding: Hardcover
number of pages: 252
publisher: Sun Archive (OPT Zamek)
partner: BWA Wrocław Gallery Of Contemporary Art
language of publication: English
year of production: 2024
edition: 800
ISBN: 978-83-971436-2-3
weight: 1470g
size: 23 x 33 cm