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Photo: Foto Otto 1 image
Self-Portrait
Paweł Althamer
painted wood
62 × 10 × 10 cm
1991
Acquisition 2000
Inv. No. 0080
Only a few artists have been able to transform the porous shabbiness of a post-socialist transformation society in such a subtle way. Althamer collects curious things in the area round the urban, pre-fabricated concrete housing estate in which he spent his childhood, and presents the finds as if they were a collection of treasures. For documenta X, he had scrapped Russian military vehicles brought to Kassel and re-interpreted them into a space station, in which a previously unemployed elderly Pole was employed for 100 days to simply sit there in an astronaut suit made of junk – a “social still life”. It suggested a parody of the longed-for jobs in the promised countries of the West.
Poetic micro interventions in daily events are typical of Althamer’s work. His vantage point is that of a magical realist. The artist has felt close to shamanistic practices and has repeatedly engaged himself with the question of how to awaken “worthless” material to life. The two self-portraits in the evn collection are key works along the way. The early wooden sculpture is the counterpart to the large, oppressively strange figure made of animal skins, wax, intestines and dried grass. “I would like to made living sculptures and to fill dead bodies with life,” says Althamer.
Wolfgang Kos, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingExhibitions
Pride and Prejudice. Art and Craft – A Love Story, Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 2023
Small Medium Large. Sculptures and Objects from the evn collection, evn sammlung, Maria Enzersdorf, 2022
Now, At The Latest. videos and other attractions from the evn collection, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems, 2015
The promises of the past 1950 – 2010. A Discontinous history in former eastern Europe, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010
Going Native: Visions from the End, New Museum, New York, 2008
Pawel Althamer. One of Many, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, 2007
Nach Rokytník. The collection of EVN, MUMOK, Vienna, 2005
Pawel & Vincent, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2004
Publications
Pride and Prejudice. Art and Craft – A Love Story (Exhibition Booklet), Vienna 2023, p. s. p.
Now, At the Latest, Maria Enzersdorf 2015, p. 35 f, 44
What good is the moon. The exhibitions of the Trussardi Foundation, Ostfildern / Ruit 2010
After Nature, July 17 – September 21, 2008, New York City 2008, p. 49 ff
Pawel Althamer. One of many. [Pressespiegel April 2007 – September 2007, on the occasion of the exhibition One of Many, Palazzina Appiani, Arena Civica di Milano, May 7th – Junie 5th 2007], Milan 2007, p. s. p.
evn sammlung 95–05, Cologne 2005, p. 42–45
evn sammlung. Ankäufe 2000–2002, Maria Enzersdorf 2002, p. 11
Context
More works
from Paweł Althamer
More painted wooden sculptures
More works
self-portraits