Paweł Althamer
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"If I were to go to a Paweł Althamer exhibition – I‘mprojecting here –and find no Paweł Althamer, it would set the right process in motion." (Paweł Althamer)
Sammlung Goetz
Polish artist Paweł Althamer has created artworks, launched happenings and initiated collective processes to an extent that few artists of his generation have paralleled, triggering questions that go far beyond the usual enquiries about the general perception of what art is, what issues it addresses, what it could potentially be and what role it actually plays in social reality. He has fundamentally changed the paradigm of the individual author by including others in the creative process. He has transformed conventional notions of the aesthetic of the art object, which is conventionally symbolic and, at best, focused on changing perceptions of it, by applying his ideas of specific action and active intervention in social and human relationships. Althamer has gone far beyond the formal precision and conceptual clarity of authentically expressive outbursts of creativity in contemporary art by successfully conveying a deeply-felt spirituality that overarches all indifference to the metaphysical questions of our existence. The works in this exhibition give an insight into his visionary approach, situated somewhere between such classic sculptural pieces as Self-portrait or Matejka, on which the artist tends to work in isolation, and the collective endeavours of, say, Bródno People, encompassing his specific engagement with young people in such projects as Einstein Class.
Paweł Althamer
128 pages, 110 ill., 16 pages insert, softcover
German/English
2012, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern
ISBN 978-3-7757-3153-9
€ 25,00
