SARKS is a series of large-scale oil paintings that confront the viewer with the raw, visceral presence of flesh. Wawrzyniuk shifts the focus from the idealised body to its material condition — exposed, vulnerable, undeniably physical.

The title refers to the Greek term sarks, meaning flesh as corporeal substance, set in tension with soma, the living, sensing body. Within this conceptual framework, the paintings explore the fragile boundary between spirit and matter, consciousness and tissue. By depicting meat — detached from the living organism — Wawrzyniuk invites reflection on what unites all sentient beings at the most fundamental level.

The series draws on the long tradition of meat imagery in art history. It resonates with the symbolic charge of Baroque vanitas painting and echoes the uncompromising physicality of Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox. For Wawrzyniuk, these historical references are not quotations but points of departure — a way to reconsider how flesh has functioned as a site of mortality, sacrifice, and shared biological reality.

Rather than presenting meat as spectacle, SARKS treats it as a mirror. The paintings confront viewers with their own embodied condition, asking where humanity resides: in spirit, in intellect, or in the vulnerable material from which we are made.