The Haus der Kunst to Show Major Exhibition of Polish Artist Wilhelm Sasnal

Written by Graham Thorndyke Monday, 30 January 2012 00:57

Munich, Germany  - The Haus der Kunst is proud to present "Wilhelm Sasnal", on view at the museum from February 3rd through May 13th. The exhibition provides insight into Sasnal's work from 1999 to the present. It shows more than 60 paintings and a selection of his films. The exhibition is organised by Whitechapel Gallery, London, in collaboration with Haus der Kunst, Munich. Wilhelm Sasnal (b. 1972 in Tarnow, Poland), has already attracted international attention with a series of solo exhibitions. His paintings chronicle the complex experience of life today.

Mixing art historical references with images taken from the internet, their subject matter knows no limits: from icons of popular culture such as Roy Orbison to much admired paintings of the past such as Georges Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières (1884), from the lonesome cowboys in a Steven Spielberg film, to the shocking photographs of Mexican photographer Enrique Metinides. Art Spiegelman’s comic-style narration of the Holocaust serves as pretext for a series of stark black-and-white paintings, while the news image of a Japanese girl rescued from the tsunami becomes a jewel-like colour composition. No conventional boundaries are valid: history meets the present, public mixes with private, Romanticism fuses with Realism. As Sasnal himself states: ‘There are no rules.’ The only rule is that ‘you must not cheat’. In a visual culture flooded by photographic images, Sasnal’s work attests to the continuous spellbinding power of painting.


This exhibition surveys his work of the past ten years. It opens with recent works referencing world events and the artist’s extensive travels before returning to Pop-inspired work from the 1990s and reflections on the troubled history of his native Poland. The cross-over between film, video, photography and painting which forms the focus of the third part of the exhibition is complemented by a selection of Sasnal’s acclaimed shorts and feature films screened as part of the accompanying events programme.

Depending on the subject, Wilhelm Sasnal also changes his painting style. In early paintings like the "Maus" series there are little personal traces of the author in the brushwork. In later individual paintings the application of paint is rich or impasto. The billowy grass through which four women are portrayed from behind as they walk towards a barren hill is wiped onto the canvas using ribbed fabric ("Untitled", 2004); Photophobia" (2007), which expresses the hangover feeling and the abhorrence of light, is painted with the artist's fingers. For the topic of radiation and nuclear power Wilhelm Sasnal foresookt control of the paint and let it run across the canvas ("Power Plant in Iran", 2010). Taken as a whole, Sasnal's works from the last decade attest to his passion for the history of painting and his conceptual exploration of painting as a medium. When speaking about the lengthy process of writing his latest novel, Gary Shteyngart said that a book set in the present is already an historical novel when it is published. Wilhelm Sasnal meets this risk of immediate devaluation with the timelessness of art. His selection from the mass of images in comic books, newspapers, television and the Internet tells its very own "Super Sad True Love Story."


The Haus der Kunst (literally House of Art) is an art museum in Munich, Germany. It is located at Prinzregentenstrasse 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park. The building was constructed from 1933 to 1937 following plans of architect Paul Ludwig Troost as the Third Reich's first monumental structure of Nazi architecture and as Nazi propaganda. The museum, then called Haus der Deutschen Kunst ("House of German Art"), was opened in July 18, 1937 as a showcase for what the Third Reich regarded as Germany's finest art. The inaugural exhibition was the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung ("Great German art exhibition"), which was intended as an edifying contrast to the condemned modern art on display in the concurrent Entartete Kunst exhibition. After the end of World War II, the museum building was first used by the American occupation forces as an officer's mess; in that time, the building came to be known as the "P1", a shortening of its street address. The building's original purpose can still be seen in such guises as the swastika-motif mosaics in the ceiling panels of its front portico. Beginning in 1946, the museum rooms, now partitioned into several smaller exhibition areas, started to be used as temporary exhibition space for trade shows and visiting art exhibitions. Some parts of the museum were also used to showcase works from those of Munich's art galleries that had been destroyed during the war. In 2002 the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Arts moved into the Pinakothek der Moderne. Today, while housing no permanent art exhibition of its own, the museum is still used as a showcase building for temporary exhibitions and for visiting exhibits. Among many others, the Haus der Kunst has housed the Tutankhamun and the Zeit der Staufer exhibits. Since 1983, the museum building also houses the nightclub P1, Munich's famous high-society hang-out. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.hausderkunst.de

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