An impressively large and youthful crowd streamed down 21st Street for the opening of Piotr Uklanski's first Gagosian gallery show last Thursday, and wandered through the exhibition's corkscrew layout with expressions of bewilderment and wonder. "I feel like I'm in a haunted house," said one woman, walking into a dark room filled with gold-tinseled figurines of Polish Cathedrals.

The show, titled Bialo-Czerwona ("White-Red"), displays all of Uklanski's most endearing qualities -- his bombast, wicked humor, and perverse take on pop cultural iconography. A soaring rainbow of crockery rises up a wall opposite a fascistic aquiline statue; a raised brass fist stands surrounded by blood-spattered canvases. But unlike Summer Love, Uklanski's recent Polish western film, Bialo-Czerwona never feels contrived or jokey. The fascination with Polish identity -- a subject Uklanski has never before addressed so directly -- creates an unlikely continuity that delights even as it haunts. --NATHANIEL RICH

March 27 to May 17
Gagosian Gallery
522 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel 212.741.1717

(Photos via gagosian.com)

READ MORE:
China's Zhang Huan leads his nation toward a new cultural revolution
Art duo McDermott and McGough refuse to live in the present