He might be called a just-paint painter. In contrast to artists like Luc Tuymans, Michael Krebber, Josh Smith or Tomma Abts, his efforts involve no photographic sources; thick, bravura brushwork; eccentric techniques; degraded everyday materials; or Conceptual frameworks. He avoids extremes of pure abstraction or precise realism, and he seems completely uninterested in painting as an object or an installation-art element.  Mr. Ziolkowski’s paintings initially look slightly old-fashioned and juvenile, as if they have just emerged from a prewar attic or a hyper-hormonal teenager’s bedroom. He works in oil; his surfaces are smooth but not shiny, painted quickly with a distinct lack of preciousness. Small, rushed strokes predominate, with occasional forays into linear improvisations that deftly balance geometry and image. Some clear sources of inspiration include Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit, Northern Renaissance painting, Picasso, cartooning and children’s book illustration, all filtered through his obsessive, of-the-moment imagination.  His art tells many stories, starting with an account of its own making, but then moving on to war, religion, violence, sex, the psyche and human folly. It often ends up in the vicinity of the body — whole or in scattered parts, sacred or profane — in ways that creep up and shock you. One of the show’s larger works is “The Clash,” in which two immense male and female figures do violent battle, colliding with such force that their heads shatter and the flesh rips from their bones. The composition brings to mind the demonic bird-creature of Ernst’s “Ange du Foyer” as rethought by Philip Guston and Otto Dix.  But Mr. Ziolkowski can also veer toward fluorescent, encompassing tonalities and compositional unities that feel almost classically modern once you get beyond the gore. An example is the all-over pinkish field of a largish work titled “Caligula.” At least from a local point of view, this expanse of cartoonish body parts and apertures suggests that Mr. Ziolkowski might be bent on negotiating a stylistic truce between two old nemeses of New York in the late 1940s: the Surrealistic entwined bodies of Pavel Tchelitchew, the author of “Hide-and-Seek,” and Jackson Pollock’s entwined skeins of paint.  Another all-over work is “Untitled (Into the Hole),” in which bodies and household garbage, the artist himself and a raft on which at least a few of the seven deadly sins seem to be in progress are all oozing toward a drainlike hole. And then there’s the yellow-pink landscape “Milk & Honey,” a Matta-like ode to breasts.  Mr. Ziolkowski’s paint style and application are under constant adjustment. “Untitled (King of Israel)” is a kind of Picassoid portrait, but also a biological and geological cross-section — with a crown of thorns — whose twisted, patterned strata form both an automatist cartography and a tortured body. In contrast, “Pilgrimage” is an old-masterish update. It shows two rockers, one gory and one hairy, leading a line of skeletons across four small canvases and through the four seasons, during which the creatures progressively gain flesh, muscle and independent brains.  There’s a grossness to this work and its bodily extremes that wasn’t as visible last year at the New Museum, where Mr. Ziolkowski’s efforts looked, in the main, a bit more mature and varied. Maybe it is just a phase he is going through. Maybe he wants to counter the chic gallery setting with some unsettling rawness, letting us know that success is fine, but that he doesn’t intend to take it easy, or be easy to take.  “Jakub Julian Ziolkowski: Timothy Galoty & the Dead Brains” runs through July 30 at Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, Manhattan; (212) 794-4970, hauserwirth.com.  A version of this review appears in print on July 6, 2010, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Body, Whole or in Parts. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, a young Polish painter who is generating buzz, is having his American solo debut at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York.