Awesome Art: The Architectural Art of Brian Biedul

Brian Biedul's artistic endeavors are concerned with how art istelf exists in space and how that space is art. The naked men that are confined in his rectangular and square spaces are representations of easily recognized structural elements. They are meant less to portray male nudes as erotica then as architecture of form and functional placement. The tension of the bodies disclose the shape of the space like struts supporting a beam would do. Biedul wants the viewer to be less aware of the body than the space it occupies and how it occupies that space. The entire figure, the white backgrounds, and the edges of the painting are the art with equal importance. Each element is essential in conveying Biedul's "Gestalt of Space."

That being said, his choice of a lean, muscular, tanned, and mature nude man is far more startling than had he occupied the spaces with more static structures. The viewer may miss the artist's intention because of the dramatic tension portrayed in a man trapped inside a box. The paintings are claustrophobic and seem to represent the spirit confined in a prison of its own devising; as if the soul wants escape from its condition and is frustrated in the attempt of expanding, thwarted in its ascension.

These works do not register an erotic charge and they aren't intended to. Instead they make the viewer pay closer attention to how the body itself is as a muscular architecture. For gay men, gazing upon a figure that is beautifully composed but ultimately confined (closeted, restricted) has unusually strong resonance.