After-Easter Show

source: tateorguk

Polish sculptor. He has said of his sculpture that it is informed by an aesthetic of ‘the ill-defined amateur snapshot of the 50s and 60s, essentially grey’. He made his first important sculpture as part of the graduation requirements for the Warsaw Academy. In this representation of a young boy standing by a table on a raised platform, Balka rehearsed the themes of nostalgia and remembrance that he was to explore in his subsequent work. He featured it as the centre of a performance, in which he used the ritual of confirmation to suggest rites of passage, or graduation. In the mid 1980s he staged a number of ‘active openings’ that suggest the influence of Joseph Beuys in the use of simple material props. In the late 1980s he developed his figurative sculpture in a number of works that evoke mythical figures and broadened his repertoire of symbolic materials to include ashes, different types of wood and neon. In 1990, with the exhibition Good God (Warsaw, Gal. Dziekanka), he moved from figuration to simple non-figurative forms that retained elements of human physiology in their dimensions, and often in their appearance as semi-functional objects such as beds or coffins. The persistence of personal narrative associations could be seen as an assertion of the individual against the collectivisation of life in Poland under martial law, while the use of ordinary industrial materials suggests a protest against the influx of western consumer capitalism into Eastern Europe.
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source: miroslaw-balka

Mirosław Bałka was born in 1958 in Warsaw, Poland. In 1985 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and from 1986 to 1989 worked together with Marek Kijewski and Miroslaw Filonik in the ‘Consciousness Neue Bieriemiennost’. In 1991 he received the Mies van der Rohe Stipend in Krefeld. He runs the Spatial Activities Studio at Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and lives and works in Otwock and Warsaw. His work is owned by museums worldwide including: Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; Moderna Galerija, Ljubliana; MOCA, Los Angeles; MOMA, New York; Museu Serralves, Porto; Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Tate Modern, London; The Art Institute, Chicago; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and Center of Contemporary Art, Warsaw. He has also been commissioned to create a number of permanent outdoor works, including the memorial to the victims of the Estonia Ferry disaster in Stockholm (1997) and most recently “AUSCHWITZWIELICZKA” in Cracow Lipowa Str. (2010).
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source: renaissancesocietyorg

In the last few years Miroslaw Balka, a thirty-four year old artist who works in Otwock, Poland (a small town near Warsaw), has been included in all of the major survey exhibitions in Europe: he was in Christos Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal’s Metropolis exhibition in Berlin; represented Poland in the Aperto wing of the 44th Venice Bienale; and participated in this year’s Documenta IX in Kassel, Germany. His understated and intelligent installation amidst the extravaganza atmosphere of Documenta, and his equally thoughtful and poetic show at the Museum House Lange in Krefeld, have confirmed his standing as a remarkably focused and sensitive artist.

Balka’s sculptures of the mid-1980s were the first to evince his sense of drama and theatricality. These works involved whole or fragmented human forms in tense relation to stark inanimate objects. First Communion (1985) is a literal depiction of a dressed-up young boy standing next to a small table. His hand rest lightly on the edge of the table in a gesture of relaxation or support. The ambiguous hand gesture makes the boy’s mood provocatively unclear. However, the fact that he is looking off in the distance over his left shoulder rather than straight ahead or at the table–glancing at a family member, a fellow classmate, or out a window–certifies the tension, the discomfort of the moment. The pleasure or fright of being the center of attention in such a formal ceremony is undercut by the seriousness of the occasion. The sculpture is James Joyce’s Stephen Daedalus incarnate.

Balka’s sculptures have been described as austere, severe, even existential, one art critic going so far as to characterize his work as sharing the same attitutdes as the writings of Samuel Beckett. (Indeed, Balka’s work has much in common with 20th Century Irish literature.) And, like Beckett, underlying the bleak content and material poverty of Balka’s sculptures is a keen sensitivity, insight, and compassion for human suffering.

In his more recent work Balka has subdued such literal elements as the human figure to focus on the tension of more abstract things. By titling his show 36,6 (which is the Centigrade equivalent of 98.6 Fahrenheit), Balka specifies the human warmth that is absent from his materials and objects, which are otherwise mute, inert, and faceless. Balka’s work aches for the human body. Its attitudes of patience and purpose empowers its dramatic presence in a room.

Something like sculptural poetry is the result, a sort of haiku of materials and objects. Wooden planks, steel boxes, terrazo slabs, salt, ashes, felt pads, sponge linings, and fabric sacks combine to form subtle theatrical delineations of space. One becomes aware of the empty spaces between and under Balka’s things; the way the sculptures have feet that in turn rest on felt pads that raise them just slightly off the floor or how a sponge lining adds a feeling of tenderness or sadness to otherwise cold hard forms. In addition, the significance of salt as a life-giving substance and ashes as the residue of death is magnified in Balka’s works.

Such details lend the work an overall familiarity that is rooted in the body, and the way in which such objects as tables, beds, cofffins, or tombstones function as extensions or markers of the human body. All of Balka’s sculptures are scaled to his own physical proportions (his height, his arm’s length, or the girth of his shoulders), and all the sculptures’ titles are a simple reiteration of these dimensions in centimeters. For example, 190 centimeters (approximately 6 feet three inches) is Balka’s height, and is a dimension that occurs repeatedly in his work. Where the early work depicted the human figure the new work merely suggests it, leaving physical and mental space for viewers to project themselves into it.

The absent body that is suggested by Balka’s work, however, is not necessarily that of the artist. Balka’s sculptures are not autobiographical. Rather, in order to most accurately make work about our collective fragility and mortality he naturally references the knowledge and experience of his own body. Balka never assumes or pretends to know about us, speak about us, or tell us how we feel; but by making work that so poetically captures the strength and melancholy of living he inspires us to reflect on our own lives.
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source: elculturales

Miroslaw Balka nació en 1958 en Otwock, una pequeña población a las afueras de Varsovia. Educado en un ambiente católico y, por supuesto, socialista, heredó de sus padres, él era grabador y ella escultora, el interés por el lenguaje escultórico. Balka continuó la tradición pero comenzó a utilizar materiales inéditos en el ámbito familiar como papel, cuero, metal o incluso sal para realizar un tipo de escultura de marcada fragilidad y vulnerabilidad, desarrollando temáticas relacionadas con lo efímero y lo no perdurable. El artista polaco quiere relacionar la escultura con la experiencia cotidiana mediante la transformación de materiales perecederos en símbolos de la existencia humana. Se trata de adaptar el material a una dimensión física, corpórea, a la idea de experiencia, a lo biográfico. En este sentido llama la atención su percepción de la geometría, siempre en relación con su infancia, su cuarto en su casa de Otwock, que ahora utiliza como estudio. La alusión a la memoria del lugar y a la percepción física de la vida son los cimientos sobre los que se asienta su obra.

Balka presta mucha atención a los montajes de sus exposiciones. Quiere en todo momento convertir el espacio en lugar. En numerosas ocasiones se ha hablado de los montajes de Balka como la construcción de una frase. éstas están compuestas por sonidos y silencios y es así como el artista trama sus exposiciones. Por medio de la acumulación de historias y tramas argumentales, Balka crea un compendio de biografía y metáfora combinando lo real y lo imaginario. La instalación de la parte superior, Inside the WhiteCube, se llama “Dead End” y es un espacio vacío cuyos muros han sido recubiertos con ceniza hasta una altura de 2,5 metros. Pese a que no hay absolutamente nada, es imposible sentir la sensación de vacuidad. Hay evidentes resonancias fúnebres en lo que constituye otras de las grandes metáforas de Balka. Y es que, como él mismo ha comentado en más de una ocasión: “La tristeza te da más oportunidades para pensar”.
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source: andreavellosoblogspot

Miroslaw Balka, um artista polonês bastante sombrio e minimalista, que trabalha com instalações, cinema, escultura…enfim…muitos materiais orgânicos como cinzas, pelos, ferrugem sabão. Seu trabalho e experiências são uma profunda relação pessoal e coletiva com a memória, tanto pessoal como permeia a história da Polônia. Faz referências aos rituais católicos e ao holocausto, matéria prima das cicatrizes que reflete. Sua obra as vezes reflete a sutileza e as vezes adquirem um tom super intenso e grave.
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source: exporevue

Miroslaw Balka est né in 1958 en Pologne, où il vit et crée, proche de ses racines, proche de l’Histoire. Son travail s’apparente à l’Arte Povera, par nécessité; il confirme avoir depuis toujours créé avec ce qu’il lui “tombe sous la main”. Dans son univers, ses vidéos, installations ou sculptures, il explore les croisements entre l’histoire individuelle et l’expérience collective et puise dans ses racines catholiques et dans les fractures historiques de son pays, une sensibilité empathique et autobiographique.