10 Questions With… Krzysztof Strzelecki

Krzysztof Strzelecki: To be honest, it originally was the toilet flush, which I saw on a trip to the United States. I found it so erotic and beautiful. We don’t really have them in Europe—this physical object that is so chunky that you interact it. We mostly just have a button to press, or contactless ones you wave at. This very dirty way of flushing toilets—apparently I was doing it wrong, touching it with my hand. Apparently you should just kick it with your foot?

ID: It’s like a secret code. And you wanted to decorate them?

KS: Well, when I was living in London and Edinburgh, the older Victorian-style houses had bathrooms that were painted blue, or covered in flowers. I was always laughing, it looked as if someone was shitting in the woods. In those times, they painted the toilets to emphasize the natural aspect of the toilets. And it was so nice because today everything is so clean, boring and white. In the ’70s, you still had toilets painted purple or pastel. I’m from Poland, so for me, those pastel colors are the Communism of my childhood. I hate it, but there’s something cute about it at the same time. Anyway, I thought I could use the object for my painting, instead of the traditional vase. There’s always something colorful in my work, so the hygienic, white bathroom vibe mixes with the colorful aspect of past and present. 

ID: As a queer person, and maybe specifically as a gay guy, public bathrooms are complicated spaces. How are you thinking through all this in your work?

KS: Public toilets are everywhere, but they’re invisible. To me, it was a bit like the queer aspect, which you cannot see until you want to find it. They are exciting and scary. At festivals, there are communal, circular toilets, where you can see each other and talk. It’s interactive and fun with changing vibes. You can drink a beer with a colleague, a guy you hook up with, or with someone else at a concert. At the Barbican, there were urinals that were just a wall of tile with a drain on the bottom. You just stood next to each other and it was very open. There are all these unwritten toilet rules: like when you and another guy go the toilet together, you never go to the urinal next to him, you go to the next one. Right? Unfortunately, they put separators at the Barbican, but you can still find pictures online; it was so beautiful. So cute, queer, and strange.

ID: A lot like your urinals for multiple users! How do they relate to the ceramic apartment buildings you make?

KS: It’s all about narrative storytelling. Fantasy cruising. New York was a big inspiration for the show. Here, when you use hookup apps, instead of meeting in a park, you usually go into the home. So, an aspect of cruising now is finding somebody’s home attractive. Some of these buildings I made completely from online pictures. I’ve been walking around and I found of them, and it was so beautiful. You use all the spaces you have in New York architecture—especially the water tank, the fire escape, and the roof. Even roofs here are not empty places, as you have trees, a garden, and a barbecue. It’s so beautiful to me, this meaning of home. You have to work on keeping it safe, fixing and working with it.

ID: Are the figures in your work sourced from actual men and actual scenarios?

KS: They are real guys. I hope I removed the sense of pornography from my work. I also hope it’s a comedic story that doesn’t give you the traditional porn vibe. People send me images. Twitter and Instagram are good sources. But I want to create a story: the guys coming into the house, and there’s already a party in the bathroom so they hook up in the doorway, or whatever. These images tell what happened in the building.

ID: And what about the men you paint on the walls of white tiles?

KS: The idea was, again, cruising in the toilet, and doing something unhygienic in that hygienic white space. I wanted to explore that feeling when you cruise and then somebody comes and you run away, that tension in the air. This feeling of something happened. Your brain saw it, but your eyes didn’t. You just feel the energy. I kept the tiles white with the idea that’s almost an invisible drawing. And it’s all porcelain, so you don’t have contrast between the lines. That one is of me and my partner.

ID: There’s such a powerful backlash happening in the United States, I suppose Europe too, against queer content and expression. Is that something you’re worried about?

KS: There’s so much shame over bodies. But they’re supposed to be celebrated and adored. I never understand how people at home sometimes don’t even have a mirror. In terms of politics, being in New York is a bit of a bubble. In London, people maybe have an opinion, but they don’t say things. People at my gym, for example, might be very Catholic, Jewish or Muslim, and they know me personally before they find out what I’m doing. So, they already have made up their mind about me as a person. Luckily, so far, I haven’t got any bad comments about my work.

ID: What was it like growing up in Poland?

KS: It wasn’t the easiest, but I was lucky to have people protecting me. As a teenager, I went through periods of being punk, and then goth—wearing everything black and leather and spikes—and then listening to reggae and having long hair, and then a colorful Mohawk. I went to university in Warsaw, and that’s where I came out. My sister already knew it, and my friends in high school were like: Yeah, you said it with your body language. Everybody knew before me—well, maybe I knew it, but didn’t want to say it out loud.

ID: When did you begin making ceramics?

KS: I was in school in London, where I was studying painting. But after my first year, I moved to photography because I just didn’t have space there. During the summer, I went to Rome and Japan, and fell in love with ceramics. I had the idea of a project transferring images onto ceramic plates. It was the perfect medium, because you have to physically move around the object to see everything. I like how that aspect interacts with the idea of cruising, of what’s not visible directly but has different things at different angles.

ID: A few of the pieces in the show are “functional,” in terms of their plumbing—why did you make that decision?

KS: People think that because the pieces are ceramic, they’re all usable, but it depends on how you fire them, what temperature they are at and the glaze. I was finishing the show and thinking about how to install it, and I was missing something. There were the tiles, the urinals, the fetish of the open and dirty part of public cruising. I thought, let’s make a sink. It’s the symbol of washing off your sin. Leaving with clean hands. I always went to Catholic church on Sundays, and it created my personality and my references. I started researching sinks, and the toilet flushes, and found these brass tops. They sort of look like uncut penises, which is so funny. They used to be these antique brass fixtures, but now everything is made in China with boring silver and chrome. How is it possible we don’t make them anymore? The object itself is beautiful. But the meaning of it is beautiful as well, telling the story of design that we used to care more about.

Rendezvous is on view at the Anat Ebgi Gallery through June 14, 2025.