8.05 – 31.07.2013
Mirosław Bałka’s exhibition Nachtgesichten comprises ten video works made between April and September 2012. They were created specifically to be shown at the WRO Art Center, where they will be presented for the first time. The images were recorded during noctural visits to spaces that are very familiar to him, including his workshop in Otwock and his studio in the Warsaw suburb Międzylesie.
Bałka shot these nighttime excursions, explorations and rituals with a hand-held camera, capturing not only the images emerging from the darkness but also the ultra-close-up presence of the artist himself, making this the first time Bałka has ever appeared in his own video works.
The ten pieces that make up Nachtgesichten constitute a system of allusions to reality as well as to Bałka’s oeuvre: The objects and archives we see collected in his workshop interiors are an index, as it were, to meanings and values of significance to the artist.
The Nachtgesichten exhibition will open at the WRO Art Center on May 8th 2013, as a part of the 15th WRO Media Art Biennale.
The opening will be highlighted by a special edition of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza featuring a front page specially designed by Bałka.
Curator: Piotr Krajewski
Mirosław Bałka (b. 1958 in Warsaw, Poland) — a Polish sculptor. He also deals drawing and experimental film.
He began his career with figurative sculpture. Since the 1990s, his focus has shifted to more abstract installations. He often uses discontinued objects. Since ten years — also video. These records represent undefined fragments of reality getting closer to mental condition.
He graduated from the Nucleonic Technical School in Otwock and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (class of professor Jan Kucz, 1985). Runs the Spatial Activities Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In years 1986—89 worked together with Marek Kijewski and Miroslaw Filonik in the “Consciousness Neue Bieriemiennost”. He is a receiver of the the Mies van der Rohe Stipend in Krefeld (1991). Member of Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
Bałka’s works have been shown at the most important international exhibitions including: documenta, Kassel (1992); The Venice Biennale (1990, 1993, 2003, 2005); The Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1995); The Sao Paolo Art Biennial (1998); The Biennale of Sydney (1992,2006); Santa Fe Biennial (2006).
His work is owned by major museum collections worldwide including: Tate Modern, London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, MOCA, Los Angeles; SFMOMA, San Francisco; MOMA, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; The Art Institute, Chicago; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museu Serralves, Porto; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kiasma, Helsinki; Kroller Muller, Otterlo; The National Museum of Art, Athens, The National Museum of Art, Osaka; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Moderna Galerija, Ljubliana. In Poland: Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź; Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; The Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cracow.
In 2009, his work How It Is exhibited in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in London was commisioned as part of the Unilever Series. The most recently permanent outdoor work, AUSCHWITZWIELICZKA, can be seen in Cracow on Lipowa Str. (2010).
10 new works made especially for WRO will be presented on the exhibition NACHTGESICHTEN during the 15th International Media Art Biennale WRO 2013 Pioneering Values in Wrocław, Poland.
He lives and works in Otwock and Warsaw.
