Adam Szymczyk: I’m extremely honored to be here for a conversation with Wilhelm Sasnal, whose exhibition we opened yesterday. The show, titled Painting as Prop, sets forth a perspective or several possible ways of looking at painting. It could be seen as a hypothesis about the position of painting today. What is a painting besides being an object of desire, a trophy, an investment, and many other things that it can be?
In other words, what if painting was a prop? This idea of a prop puts a certain duality in the heart of these supposedly autonomous object called painting. Museums in Western Europe, the United States, and many other places are filled with paintings that were built on this model of autonomy of art developed in Western Europe. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is not an exception here, and quite on the contrary, it’s a museum with very prominent paintings, whose history truly begins with modern art.
The modern collection includes a substantial acquisition of the works of Kazimir Malevich in the 1950s. It’s important to locate this moment of origin for this museum in the acquisition of non-Western European art. As an artist, Malevich was an influential theorist, practitioner, and educator within Russian avant-garde art, whose work changed the way we perceive painting. It also opened the way to radical non-objectivity, which materialized in Russian productivism, a short-lived moment in the history of avant-garde art in which the belief in bringing together industrial labor, design, and art was presented as a possibility. After that, it all went back to painting again. Art historian Benjamin Buchloh called this moment of defeat or resignation of the avant-garde the “ciphers of regression.”
Adam Szymczyk moderates the conversation Artist Talk with Wilhelm Sasnal at the Stedelijk Museum on March 30, 2024. Photo: Remco Sijtzema.
Wilhelm Sasnal, The Assistant, 2024, film stills. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Here we arrive at the exhibition of Wilhelm Sasnal’s works, and we have three elements: the works in the exhibition, the feature film, which is yet to be premiered, and the book that served as the basis for the film adaption. The novel was written by Swiss writer Robert Walser in 1908 and is called Der Gehülfe, which can be translated as The Assistant. The protagonist of this book, a young man called Joseph Marti, is fired from his job and then gets another job. He’s going to be an assistant in the Evening Star Villa, to an engineer and self-appointed inventor called Carl Tobler. Joseph Marti moves in with Carl Tobler’s family, which consists of Tobler’s wife and their children. He starts sharing their life, eating meals with them, sleeping in the attic. His job is to help the engineer pitch his inventions to prospective investors, which are rather a phantasmagoria – they never materialize.
The job that Joseph Marti is doing does not bring any concrete results. In a way, he has no purpose. This figure of an eternal assistant is suspended between his intention to somehow prove that he’s useful and the impossibility of delivering anything that is useful. This is the theme and the reason why Wilhelm Sasnal decided to make a film based on this book written nearly 120 years ago.
Perhaps this figure is also a hero of our time. We are well aware that, perhaps not predominantly, but also in the cultural sphere, there is a huge discussion on precarious labor. People often work on short contracts, and it is increasingly more difficult to secure a more permanent position, especially for young people aspiring to work in the art system and elsewhere. In this context, I would like to refer to a book that was written in the mid-1990s by philosopher and theorist Boris Groys. It’s titled The Loneliness of the Project and focuses on the condition of a project that is always ahead of us. We are neither here nor firmly there; we are somewhere else, where we have yet to arrive, and before we reach that destination, another project emerges. Thus, we never arrive and are always suspended, with all the attendant disposability that our position entails or even begs for.
How do we get from book to the exhibition? Well, via the paintings that Sasnal made explicitly to be used as props in the film. Since the film is partly set in the early twentieth century, a period when the avant-garde movement was on the rise, the paintings chosen by Wilhelm to adorn the film set—a villa located outside Kraków—emulate well-known works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque, as well as a portrait of a musician by Leonardo da Vinci and the record cover of an album by The Smiths from 1984.
These paintings are used in the film to correspond with the character or atmosphere of specific scenes. The props are larger in the exhibition than the original paintings they are based on, because they need to be highly visible in the film. Wilhelm, is the format influenced by the function of the painting in the film’s reality or by their presentation in the gallery?
Adam Szymczyk and Wilhelm Sasnal during the conversation Artist Talk with Wilhelm Sasnal at the Stedelijk Museum on March 30, 2024. Photo: Remco Sijtzema.
Wilhelm Sasnal: Yes, that’s one of the reasons why the paintings are larger than the originals. But I prefer this also for practical reasons; it’s easier to paint the copy on a larger scale because I don’t have to focus on the details of a smaller original. I only used them to ensure they are recognizable in the film. My intention wasn’t to replicate them exactly.
Adam Szymczyk: We start with a painting that I thought would be quite fitting for the exhibition, which proposes to see painting as a prop, because it represents what you might imagine as the screen of an old-fashioned cathode ray TV monitor displaying the flash of a nuclear explosion. This flash literally burns out the screen, leaving nothing or almost nothing visible for a moment. Around the edges, you have some particles, in a slightly flesh-colored hue with some additional texture, dabs of paint straight from the tube.
In the center of the painting, which is traditionally that field where to would place significant motifs, faces, landscapes, or objects, there is not much. There is a suggestion that we are blinded or in a position of imagining someone who got blinded, because what we see is the impression of being blinded by the flash. It’s just to say that this painting also, in a way, not only represents the TV screen, but it’s an equivalent for it. It attempts to get closer to being the actual TV screen, in my view, at least. It is chronologically the earliest painting in the show, and it represents an absence, a blinding flash. Could you talk about the circumstances in which you painted it?
Wilhelm Sasnal, A-Bomb, 2002, oil on canvas, 85 × 100 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal: Yes, it is the earliest one. I watched a documentary about a war or an atomic bomb explosion that was recorded in black-and-white footage. What struck me was that, at the very moment of the explosion, the old screen of the television burned out. The only traces you could see were on the edges because the middle of the screen was charred. I thought that I could replicate this effect by squeezing the paint directly from the tube on the canvas and then pouring turpentine on it to make it look like it had melted. This was an important work for me because I had never used this method of applying paint on a canvas before.
Adam Szymczyk: Around that time, twenty years ago, there was a lot of painting and lot of talking about painting originating in a post-photographic realm, where the work either derives from or engages with a photographic image. Artists developed specific styles of working with photography. Wilhelm, you created these paintings based on photographs, yet you didn’t stay faithful to one painting approach, unlike many other painters. Youset off to use the medium in many different and, I would say, quite surprising, even contradicting ways.
Wilhelm Sasnal: Yes, my painting practice is quite inconsistent. Painting, to me, is a practice that allows many approaches, many ways of painting, and then you can just discard or forget them, and move on to something else. Painting is not a very responsible activity, although the choice of which paintings to exhibit carries a sense of responsibility. That’s a difference I want to make clear. I take my practice very seriously and don’t spend my time on jokes. What I try to express through painting is often quite emotional for me.
What is worth saying about this painting is that it’s not just about the atomic explosion, but also about the fear it evokes, a fear that still lingers with me. When I was a child, during the Cold War, in the beginning of the 1980s, there was this rumor circulating among the kids at school that one of the atomic bombs was targeted at my hometown, specifically at the factory in my district in the industrial city of Tarnów in southern Poland.
We were afraid of this rumor. The threats of atomic war were present. Only a couple of years ago, the United States disclosed the documents with the targets of the atomic arsenal. And it was actually not a rumor, as it was true that Tarnów was a target on their map. Nowadays, with the circumstances, I’m still afraid of it more than global warming or climate crisis. The bomb is something that still scares me the most.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled, 2022, oil on canvas, 140 × 100 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled, 2020, oil on canvas, 55 × 40 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Adam Szymczyk: You said that you’re serious and emotional about your painting. I wanted to ask you how serious and emotional one can be about painting flowers on your dining table, and this empty vase. Is there a second layer here, or did you just want to paint these things?
Wilhelm Sasnal: I just wanted to paint them. I cherish everyday life, and painting is also my everyday life. And so are the flowers in the vase. I’m very serious about it. I also like to touch on risky themes and risky subjects; so are the flowers, because they are a common motif and can be very sentimental. I want to get to the edge, when painting is still good and not mass sentimental. I don’t see my paintings as a joke, as our everyday lives are also not a joke.
Adam Szymczyk: Okay. There is a lot happening inside this glass vase, in terms of the investment required to make a complex work. I think it’s all concentrated there, where the water is. Did you use spray paint for the painting of pale green empty vase as well?
Wilhelm Sasnal: No, I made it with a brush.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Snakeskin, 2004, oil on canvas, 160 × 32 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Adam Szymczyk: There are some other works where we’re going to see the spray gun in action. It’s difficult to show this painting on the screen accurately, it is too dark. It has a relief-like quality, which is pretty much flattened here. It represents a flattened snakeskin. It’s painted on two speaker covers stacked atop of each other. Could you say something about the story of those speakers and how you came to make this?
Wilhelm Sasnal: Very often I use what I have at hand. With the speakers, it’s because our son, who was young at the time, had punctured them with a pencil or some sharp object. I bought new ones, but I wanted to use the old ones in some way. So, I decided to apply black paint to something that has a reference to music. Of course, in this music entourage, snakeskin or leather is very present. It’s quite a common motif. That’s why I painted on the speakers, also because of its patterns and long and narrow shape.
Adam Szymczyk: Here we have a work that served as a prop in the film: the portrait of Atalante Migliorotti, a musician, instrument builder, and composer who also worked as an assistant to Leonardo da Vinci. Migliorotti was the only male portrait that Da Vinci painted in his career. The original is in the collection of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. Why did you choose this pensive, lost-in-thought character for a prop to be used in the film?
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled (after “Portrait of a Musician” by Leonardo Da Vinci), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 58 × 43.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal: The choice of the paintings was strictly driven by the plot. The film begins in contemporary times, when the protagonist visits the unemployment office. He’s being sent to a job in the past by the office worker, who is a music lover. In the film, there is a shift between the contemporary and the past, which is why I wanted to point out this painting. It marks the moment when the timeline shifts. I was also intrigued by the fact that this is the only portrait of a man painted by Da Vinci. It’s unique and not well-known.
It’s important that you can see this painting without the frames in the exhibition. Originally, it was framed with a somewhat cheesy frame that suited the film’s aesthetic, but in reality looked quite bad. When we finished shooting, I changed the portrait and painted over the frame with black paint.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled (after “The Smiths” album cover), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 37 × 38 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal, The Assistant, 2024, film still. Seen in the film still is Wilhelm Sasnal’s Untitled (after “The Smiths” album cover), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 37 × 38 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Wanda Wiłkomirska, 2005, oil on canvas, 40 × 40 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Adam Szymczyk: Untitled (after “Green Bowl and Black Bottle” by Pablo Picasso) is another prop in the film. Several works that were used as props for The Assistant are from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. I’m curious to know why you chose those paintings that are in the Hermitage, which recalls the period when some important collectors in Russia were able to bring the work of [Western European] avant-garde artists to their country.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled (after “Green Bowl and Black Bottle” by Pablo Picasso), 2023, oil on canvas, 74 × 53.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal: That’s because my parents, in the 1970s or early 1980s, brought a catalog from the Hermitage, and somehow this painting always caught my attention. I was struck by the ugliness of it—it was quite repulsive. Despite being green and red and very brutal, I also liked it in a way. It was something that attracted you because of its unattractiveness.
This painting was hung in the kitchen of the villa from the film. The kitchen is in a hidden part of the villa where Mr. and Mrs. Tobler don’t go, because all their meals are brought to the table by the servant. This painting, in a way, belongs to this hidden part of the villa, which is also not a very nice place. That’s why I framed the painting with these very rough wooden slats.
Adam Szymczyk: It’s a painting after a painting, made to be hung in the kitchen of a villa in a film that is not present in the exhibition. I like this layering of deferred representations, where the original motif held some reality for Picasso back then and the original painting, via a book reproduction, is now brought back into material reality as a painterly prop, complete with this rather crude wooden frame. In the exhibition you recognize the works that were used as props in the film for their frames. They have these frames because they needed to be handled. The frame became part of the prop.
Here, we observe both formal affinity and significant differences between this large imitation of a still life by Georges Braque, which was originally created for the film, and a similarly sized painting based on a photo taken on a construction site in Greece. What was the reason for choosing this seemingly random motif for such a large painting?
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled (after “Still Life” by Georges Braque), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 142.5 × 202.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal: I simply like it. There’s no other explanation. I painted several works based on photographs I took of an abandoned Greek construction site. The Braque still life is not very close to the original one, but what was important to me was depicting the reality of things falling apart, reflecting the situation in the villa where the business is declining. I don’t see this cubist approach solely as a formal aspect; I also use it to illustrate the disintegration of reality.
Adam Szymczyk: One can discuss the crisis of representation in painting, as embodied in the cubist or other avant-garde movements, which deconstruct reality and construct a new reality from fragmented or disintegrating elements. On the other hand, the chaotic arrangement of rather modest objects evokes a sense of abandonment. I also see it as an allegory for the economic turmoil and financial instability experienced by several Eurozone countries in Southern Europe, which ended in the austerity measures administrated by “Troika” and bailout the bailout of Greece.. I understand your interest in the motif of abandoned construction site, especially considering your holidays in Greece. However, I cannot help but associate it with what the painting fails to represent: the broader context that led to the abandonment of the construction site.
Wilhelm Sasnal: It’s interesting that you make a connection between the financial crisis and this still life. Many of the things I do, I do completely unconsciously. I sense certain connections between this image of a very ordinary piece of rubble and the situation surrounding or even triggering this motif, but I don’t always recognize these connections immediately. Sometimes, it’s only later, after I’ve finished painting, that I understand why I chose this motif over others. I often act purely on instinct, and this could very well be one of those instances.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled (after “The Absinthe Drinker” by Pablo Picasso), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 110 × 80 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal, The Assistant, 2024, film still. Seen in the film still is Wilhelm Sasnal’s Untitled (after “The Absinthe Drinker” by Pablo Picasso), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 110 × 80 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Adam Szymczyk: In your film, paintings serve as commentary on the plot. Mrs. Tobler finds her alter ego in the figure of the absinthe drinker. One could argue that the works represent the ambivalence of Mrs. Tobler, who is simultaneously a mother and a wife, and yet harbors other feelings that cannot be categorized. You made an enlarged version of the “Absinthe Drinker” by Pablo Picasso for the film. Picasso famously had his “blue period,” and later a “red period.” Could you discuss the choice of colors in your rendering of “Absinthe Drinker”?
Wilhelm Sasnal: I didn’t want to emphasize the blue period. What mattered more to me was capturing the mood, which resonated with Mrs. Tobler’s loneliness. That’s why I chose those colors. However, this is another painting that I reworked when I received it back in my studio from the film set. Sometimes, if I’m not satisfied with the initial outcome, I might let it sit for a while before making adjustments, as I did with this one.
Adam Szymczyk: By incorporating these avant-garde paintings into Walser’s novel, you added another layer that resonates with contemporary moments in the film. Could you discuss how you structured the film, the difference between the period depicted in the novel [the early twentieth century] and the period in which the film was shot [the twenty-first century]? How do these two realities intersect in the film?
Wilhelm Sasnal: I knew the story of Robert Walser. All his books and writings are in a way autobiographical. When I read this book, I realized how his situation then was similar to the current situation of workers; people who cannot feel comfortable in this reality because tomorrow is uncertain, and they work in precarious situations. When the protagonist was unemployed and arrived at the villa, even though he wasn’t paid any salary, he stayed there because he had a place to live and eat, and that was sufficient for him. This instability was common in the past and remains so today, especially when contracts are often temporary.
This state of instability is not something I experienced; maybe I experienced this just for a while right when Anka and I finished our studies in the late 1990s. I think that our generation, that began their adolescence when they experienced the changes of 1989, profited from this – got jobs that were offered by the new reality. I don’t think that young people, in their 20s or 30s today in Poland have such opportunities.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled (after “Dance” by Henri Matisse), 2018, oil on canvas, 260 × 340 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Untitled (after “The Green Stripe” by Henri Matisse), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 72.5 × 52.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal, The Assistant, 2024, film still. Seen in the film still is Wilhelm Sasnal’s Untitled (after “The Green Stripe” by Henri Matisse), 2023, oil on canvas, incl. frame: 72.5 × 52.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ.
Adam Szymczyk: Here we have a wall where one painting hangs on the left, hung at some distance, and then two other paintings. These two paintings seem casual yet are weighty for various reasons. Could you share the story behind them and explain why you painted two, not one?
Wilhelm Sasnal, First of January (back), 2021, oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal, First of January (side), 2021, oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Wilhelm Sasnal: We were returning from a New Year’s Eve celebration with friends in an apartment in the mountains, driving through villages and backroads to Kraków. Along the way, we passed by Oświęcim [Polish for Auschwitz]. We wanted to see the fences of the camp, so we stopped on the railway. It was surprising that we could stop the car and somewhat block access to the gate. I took a series of snapshots, uncertain about what I would do with them, and later painted these scenes based on those snapshots.
Adam Szymczyk: You mentioned something about the paint that you used for this work. Did you select this paint based on its name?
Wilhelm Sasnal: No, no, I only realized it here, in the exhibition, when the paintings were hanging on the wall. I noticed that the name of the paint I used for the gate and building is “Flesh Tint,” resembling the color of flesh. I found this to be quite significant or poetically poignant in a disturbing way.
Adam Szymczyk: It connects the building of this institution of the extermination camp with the faces. The paintings are titled “First of January (back)” and “First of January (side)”. It makes you think about the way each of the inmates had a left andright profile and front-view police-style photos taken upon arrival at the camp.
We are at a juncture of European modernity with this camp, which was rationally organized and introduced a lot of necropolitical technologies used by the regime of power, in this case, Nazi power. We begin to understand why some thinkers decided to take steps to finish the work of historian and philosopher Michel Foucault and to extend the analysis of institutions of European Enlightenment beyond mental asylums and schooling systems, but also to bring it to extermination camps.
In these two paintings, there is also something about our position within all that. In one of them, the passenger is looking to their right, and in the other they are looking forward, seeing the past that is at the same time present. These temporalities and directionals could be confusing. How do you navigate living with that? How do you balance family life and studio painting amidst it all?
Wilhelm Sasnal: Somehow, I manage to live with it. I believe that’s where the private intersects with the public. Everything is intertwined yet somehow clear. My thoughts, emotions, and identity are rooted in this awareness of where I live and where I come from. Naturally, there’s a sense of detachment. What lies beyond this distance? What lies beyond the window, creating this sense of separation? Metaphorically, it’s distant because it’s beyond the window. The window and the car protect me.
Wilhelm Sasnal, Polish Border Wall, 2023, oil on canvas, 180 × 240 cm. Courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
Adam Szymczyk: It’s also about the interior space, which features a window framing the exterior. In “Polish Boder Wall” painting, the wall represents the border between Poland and Belarus, constructed during the right-wing Law and Justice Party’s governance (2015-2023). The faces of the government representatives are painted over – we see three dark silhouettes in front of this newly erected border wall, praising the success of the politics of division. The painting critically addresses the rightwing reactionary narrative, where migrants, perceived undesirables, and others are framed as threats to Poland. With this optimistic undertone, we welcome questions from the audience.
Adam Szymczyk and Wilhelm Sasnal during the conversation Artist Talk with Wilhelm Sasnal at the Stedelijk Museum on March 30, 2024. Photo: Remco Sijtzema.
Participant 1: When will the feature film be released?
Wilhelm Sasnal: It is currently in post-production and sound work. Hopefully, it will be ready in six weeks or so. We would like to show it by having a screening during the exhibition, and also premiere it at a film festival in Amsterdam. There will also be a book launch in early June, so maybe we could do something special then.
Participant 2: I have a question about this painting based on Matisse’s Dance. Its production year of 2018 predates the film’s production. There’s a picture in the film. Can you confirm if you painted this picture as well?
Wilhelm Sasnal: That one doesn’t appear in the film. I painted it when I moved to the first proper studio that I had, and still work from. I wanted to paint the biggest canvas I could put in one piece that could be brought in through the doors of the studio. It turned out that it had to be a bit shorter than the exact height of the Matisse painting. There was not enough space for the fifth dancer, so I decided to repaint Matisse’s Dance. I wanted to paint these stripes (the shutters) to the right to make it disappear, but not be cut off. It’s a discussion with the reality of what I can bring to the studio.
Participant 3: How do you relate personally to the book by Robert Walser?
Wilhelm Sasnal: I don’t personally relate to the book because I have nothing in common with the protagonists or the author. Of course, I love the book. I’m full of empathy towards Walser and his protagonists.
Participant 3: I was wondering, since you said your work was quite emotional, that somehow your choice of the book by Robert Walser would be emotional as well. I’m really a little bit flabbergasted with your answer because it sounds only like a starting point.
Wilhelm Sasnal: What I’m trying to say is that I can’t claim to have experienced any precarious situations. The book is touching, and the writing is also very funny. His story is deeply emotional, and I see these as reasons why I chose his book.
Participant 3: You were basically just carried away by the book, and it sparked the paintings with references to modernity.
Wilhelm Sasnal: Exactly, yes. That’s how it was.
Participant 4: When it comes to artists’ engagement in society, it seems that you actively choose to express your opinions about your art, politics, and society. What do you believe is the artist’s role, and why do you choose to fulfill it?
Wilhelm Sasnal: I’m not sure what the role of the artist is. I take on two perspectives: that of the artist and that of the citizen. As a citizen, especially in today’s world, one must be very conscious and aware. For a long time, I resisted being labeled a “political artist” because I didn’t see myself that way. However, I must admit that I am, although I’m unsure of the artist’s role. Each person must define their own role, but I believe it’s crucial in my case. I don’t think an artist can engage in any field for purely cynical reasons.
Participant 5: I found the idea of painting being a prop quite interesting. How do your more personal paintings of your wife and your house relate to the idea of a prop?
Wilhelm Sasnal: I don’t know if it’s a prop. None of these more personal paintings were props for the film. What’s crucial is to also include these very private and personal paintings alongside the ones that were used only as props. This allows us to explore the tension within each painting and between them. That’s how some paintings, which are totally isolated from the context, can be read differently when in the company of certain works.
Adam Szymczyk: In this exhibition, we aim to question the forms of use and the value of painting today.For example, painting might take on a role of prop in a film, reduced to its use value. Another aspect relates to the artist’s public engagement, and the political significance of the artwork.
It’s refreshing to step back from the paintings and view them as curious objects. To not fall for them as soon as we enter a museum or gallery but read their changing and conflicting contexts of reception: aesthetic, political, and social. This exhibition was a modest attempt to inquire the status of painting while still acknowledging the possibility that it might hold a critical potential and conveythe memory of traumas and catastrophes.
The intention was not solely to group paintings that served as props, but to examine the function of individual paintings as well as the medium and practice as a whole. In the case of Wilhelm Sasnal, the show reflects his practices in painting as well as film, though the film is not on view.
Wilhelm Sasnal is a painter, photographer, poster artist, illustrator and filmmaker. Sasnal studied architecture at the Krakow University of Technology followed by painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Sasnal regularly uses photographic imagery – drawn from films, reproductions of art, pop culture or his own phone – as the starting points for his paintings, which then undergo various levels of distortion, simplification or abstraction. His work often addresses weighty historical themes such as the Holocaust, or familiar pop-cultural icons, as well as the people, places and objects around him, constituting an artistic document of post-Communist Poland at a time of socio-political transformation.
Adam Szymczyk is a curator and writer based in Zurich. He was curator-at-large at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from 2020 to 2024. He is currently curator at Das Büro für Geistige Mitarbeit at Kunsthaus Zurich. He is a member of the board of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, a member of the Scientific Committee at MUDAM Luxembourg, and a member of the advisory committee of the Kontakt Art Collection in Vienna. He was Artistic Director of documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017 and served as Director and Chief Curator at Kunsthalle Basel between 2003 and 2014. He was a co-founder of the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw in 1997. In 2008 he co-curated, with Elena Filipovic, the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art. In 2011, he was a recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement at the Menil Foundation in Houston.
Speaking Back to an Incomplete Archive
