Prominent Poles
Wilhelm Sasnal, painter.
Born: December 29, 1972, Tarnów, Poland
Early life. He graduated from Zespół Szkół Technicznych in Tarnow, Poland. Then, beginning in 1992 he studied architecture for two years at the Krakow Polytechnic, followed by studying painting at the Akademia Sztuk Pięknych in Krakow, Poland. While there, he helped form an artist's collective that exhibited together as the Ładnie Group until 2000. The members made paintings of their contemporary, often banal surroundings, using a deskilled aesthetic that countered the style valued by their instructors. Sasnal finished his studies in 1999, and then worked briefly for advertising companies in Kraków while also making paintings, graphic novels (his strips are regularly published in "Machina" and "Przekroj", two Polish periodicals), photographs, and films.
Career. Sasnal produces pencil drawings, ink drawings, photographs, videos and paintings.He paints a wide variety of subjects: more or less banal everyday objects, portraits of historical figures, views of his home town Kraków, snapshots of friends and family members and very often existing images from the internet or mass media are his starting point. Other sources include Spiegelman's 1973 graphic Holocaust novel Maus, and stills from Lanzmann's 1985 documentary Shoah as source material. His approach is unpredictable and his methods range from graphic reduction and a pointedly two-dimensional, illustration-oriented style to seemingly autonomous gestures with brush and paint. While painting is still at the center of Sasnal’s work, he has also increasingly turned to photography and film. The video work The Band (2002) was made during a live performance of indie rock band Sonic Youth. A 2007 piece is a product many times removed from the 1961 Polish movie on which it is based – a fictionalized account of a historical event in which a railway worker accidentally sold industrial methyl alcohol as vodka, causing widespread illness, blindness and death. The 16-mm film projection Untitled (2007) is based on found-footage from the late 1970s of Elvis Presley. Swiniopas (Swineherd) (2008), his first ever feature-length film, is an adaptation of an 1842 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale yet radically deviates from the original. Also in 2008, Sasnal caused controversy in Scotland with his film The Other Church, which focused on the brutal murder of a Polish student Angelika Kluk in Glasgow. In September 2011, Sasnal selected a playlist of music that inspires him in his work. "I always listen to music when I make art...."
Collections. Sasnal's art work is in collections of Guggenheim Saatchi Gallery and Tate Modern in London, Centrum Pompidou in Paris, Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York, Kunsthaus in Zurich, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
Awards, prizes. 1999- Grand Prix 34th Polish Painting Competition „Bielska Jesien” organized by Galeria Bielska BWA; 2006- first place on the list of 100 most important young world’s artists in the periodical of contemporary art „Flash Art”; November 16 2006- European Vincent van Gogh prize for contemporary art (The Vincent Award) awarded by Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; 2008- his painting auctioned for $465,000 at the Philips de Pury auction house in London; 2014 – Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
Selected exhibitions Solo Exhibitions. 1999 The Hundred Pieces, Galeria Zderzak, Cracow, Poland; The Crowd, billboards of Galleria Otwarta, Cracow, Poland; Painting, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; 2000 Board Game, Galeria Potocka, Cracow, Poland;2001 Cars and Men, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, Poland; Everyday Life in Poland between 1999 and 2001, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, Poland;2002 Galerie Johnen und Schöttle, Cologne, Germany; Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, Poland; Parel, Amsterdam, Netherlands; BWA Gallery, Zielona Gora, Poland;2003 Kunstverein Münster, Germany; Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland; Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK; Wilhelm Sasnal - Monika Sosnowska, Galleria Laura Pecci, Milan, Italy; Anton Kern Gallery, New York NY, USA
Interventions: Wilhelm Sasnal, Museum van Hedendaagsekunst, Antwerp, Belgium; WISLA, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel 2004 The Band, Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland; Camden Arts Centre, London, UK; Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, Germany; ZAWA SROD, Galerie Johnen und Schöttle, Cologne, Germany; Map Trap, Galerie Raster, Warsaw, Poland;2005 Matrix 219, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley CA, USA; Anton Kern Gallery, New York NY, USA; Wilhelm Sasnal. Chinati Artist in Residence, The Locker Plant, Marfa TX, USA; 2006 Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland; Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK; At the very Center of Attention, Part 10: Wilhelm Sasnal, Center of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, Poland; Wilhelm Sasnal. Painting and Films, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; Ist das Leben nicht schön? Gruppenaustellung in 4 Kapiteln, Kapitel 2: Wilhelm Sasnal, Kunstverein Frankfurt, Germany; 2007 Years of Struggle, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland (Travelling Exhibition); Swiss Institute, New York, New York, USA; Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland; Boredom, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, Germany; permanent mural in the garden of the museum of Warsaw Uprising;2008 Years of Struggle, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento, Italy; 2009 Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland; Centro de Arte Contemporanea, Malaga, Spain; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21, Düsseldorf, Germany; Sadie Coles HQ, London, England;2011,Whitechapel Gallery, London, England
Source:
This article uses and modifies mostly the material from the Wikipedia article "Wilhelm Sasnal." Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply:
Wikipedia
Additional sources:
Wikipedia in Polish
Culture.pl: photos of some of his paintings
Published on 1/22/2015.
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