In Priápolis (2007-on going), Syd Krochmalny pushes to the extreme his exploration of the body as political territory, commodity, and myth. The title refers to Priapus, the ancient phallic deity, guardian of gardens and fertility, but also an obscene, excessive symbol. Here, that myth is reincarnated in the figure of the stripper, in scenes that merge intimate recording with performative theatricality.

The watercolors operate as an affective and carnal archive: naked, erect, painted or costumed bodies; domestic interiors and improvised dressing rooms; selfies captured in mirrors; gestures oscillating between seduction, self-presentation, and vulnerability. The medium’s light strokes and transparencies contrast with the dense materiality of what is represented—erections, tensed muscles, gazes—generating a tension between the ephemeral and the monumental.

This project does not simply document a performer: it extends the research initiated with Bull Anaconda, where Krochmalny adopts the identity of Ivan Ulrich, stripper and sex worker, as an experiment in subjectivation. In Priápolis, that identity becomes a visual myth, and the performance shifts from the dance floor to the pictorial space. Each image is a prosthesis of memory, a fragment of the construction of “the macho” as a figure of desire and spectacle, but also as an artifice sustained by physical discipline, chemicals, and the gaze of others.

Like a personal cartography, Priápolis gathers moments of intimacy and public display to reveal the double life of this body: one that uses itself as a tool, while being used by others to the point of exhaustion. Between exhibitionism and fragility, this pictorial archive builds a contemporary altar to the phallus as a cultural device, exposing both its power and its depletion.