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*1967 in Warsaw, Poland. Lives and works in Warsaw
Polish artist
Known for: Life size sculptures of family members and friends made of such materials as animal intestines, hay and human hair.
Art historical context: Contemporary conceptual art, Institutional critique
Pawel Althamer originally trained as a sculptor, but his work also bears the marks of relational art – social, collaborative, participatory art that is concerned less with producing objects than with composing human interactions. Often dematerialized to the point of invisibility, his work increasingly enlists human participants, often in a way the artist describes as "reality directed". Althamer describes his projects as social sculptures, intended to produce new urban legends and collective myths. He looks for participants for his projects, or material for his social sculptures, in his immediate surroundings: his wife and children, close and distant relatives, friends, neighbors, students he tutors at the Warsaw Academy of Art, mere acquaintances, and sometimes even passers-by. In addition to creating new social communities, Althamer involves already existing ones, such as various subcultures, including those of bikers, street musicians, tramps, industrial workers, illegal migrants, among others. Althamer is also known for his willingness to experiment with himself, and among his best-known works are intimate video portraits that show him interacting with collaborators in altered mental states, including on LSD and mushrooms. His own body is one of his most commonly used materials, and he has taken a longstanding interest in documenting his experiences encountering the world at large, resulting in works that take diverse forms, ranging from self portraits to short films.
Exhibited works
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Sciezka (Pfad), 2007. 2. OG | A | In 2007, Althamer generated a path for Sculpture Projects Münster. Starting where a footpath and bicycle trail meet in a municipal recreation area near Lake Aa, Althamer’s path led out of the city through meadows and fields. Just short of one kilometer, however, it abruptly ended in the middle of a field of barley. Surprised that the trail had suddenly ended, visitors had to decide how to react to this open-ended situation, and how to return to the city. The visitors of the exhibition, both intentional and unintentional, left their own marks of change and expansion, too. Althamer also subverts systems of rules and calls for new patterns of action with his radical performances. His withdrawal as an artist from the realization of his own performative projects further underscores his complete blending of the formerly separate spheres of art and life.
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The Motion Picture, 2000. 2. OG | A | For Motion Pictures, also known as Film, Althamer hired ten actors to perform everyday actions in a public square outside a shopping center every day at the same time for two weeks. If they didn't know what to look for, viewers could not know whether they had seen a work of art at all. The project was carried out during Manifesta in Ljubljana. Their actions were banal and unremarkable, synchronized but unconnected: a young couple kissing, a boy skateboarding, an old man feeding pigeons, a young man drinking at a table in a café. An in-the-know art lover would have struggled to spot them, and, in the process, would have experimentally framed events and considered plenty of the behavior as unscripted by the artist. A passer-by might have eventually been troubled by a sense of déjà vu, but nothing could have been said with any certainty until the film ended for the day, when all the actors simultaneously abandoned their roles and walked away. As a self-conscious subversion of the avant-garde dream, art and life merged together seamlessly, but only during working hours. | |
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Invisible, 2002. 2. OG | A |
| In 2002, to mark the end of his year-long residency at the DAAD in Berlin, Althamer designed a presentation reflecting his sense of invisibility within the artistic community. Titled Invisible, the work consisted of posters advertising an action that was to take place at Alexanderplatz: "On Friday 28.6.2002 from 17.00 to 19.00 on Alexanderplatz, the Eastern European artist Pawel Althamer will become invisible." Althamer remained comfortably in his apartment, but still kept his word, as the posters were printed with a special, rapidly-fading ink. |
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The Exhibition, 1992. 2. OG | A | During his first solo exhibition (titled The Exhibition, Oct. 2 to Oct. 4, 1992), he restored the Galeria a.r.t. in Płock, Poland, which was run by fellow student Jacek Markiewicz, to its original function. He cleaned the place, washed the floor, scraped the white paint off the tile stove, and brought in the necessary pieces of furniture so that the gallery could once again become the apartment it had once been. The artist spent several days there, recording his neighbors' daily lives on video. In 2003, he carried out a similar project for an exhibition at his Berlin gallery Neugerrieumschneider. There, he transformed the high-design space into a litter-strewn shell, essentially returning the gallery to its dilapidated pre-gentrification state. | |
| Links Foksal Gallery Foundation | Galerie Neugerriemschneider | New Museum NY | Fondazione Nicola Trussardi | Galeria a.r.t. | Further Informations 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
Credits All reproductions © Pawel Althamer | ||