Eight ceramic figures in wheelchairs – that’s an unusual sight in an exhibition. Another figure, dressed in a nun’s dark habit, sits on a regular chair. The group was created by Pawel Althamer, the Polish sculptor, performer and videomaker who, with his participatory approach and unlimited trust in the power of art to promote communication, has already made many things possible that others thought impossible.
For example, transforming a large, unattractive block of flats in which the artist himself once lived into a shimmering light sculpture, which Althamer succeeded in doing in the Bródno district of Warsaw at the turn of the millennium. He rang the bell at every apartment door on the block, spoke to every resident, and managed to get a “2000” to appear on the window grid just by turning the room lights on and off at the appointed time.
Althamer received the Lovis Corinth Prize this year. The Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie presents the award every two years together with the Artists’ Guild Esslingen to artists who are connected to the cultural landscapes of the East through life and work. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was the first to receive the prize in 1974; artists like Markus Lüpertz, Sigmar Polke, Katharina Sieverding, Magdalena Jetelova and Peter Waibel followed. So now Pawel Althamer, born in 1967, who, like all prizewinners, will be honored with a large exhibition in the Ostdeutsche Galerie.
Pawel Althamer encountering his self-portrait, which shows him carving a figure of his mother.
(Photo: Uwe Moosburger/Uwe Moosburger)
What is immediately striking in the exhibition is the unusual mix of works: in addition to the almost realistic-looking sculpture, there is a great deal of collective art that testifies to Althamer’s ability to integrate other people into the artistic process. He discovered this special talent when he moved to Bródno with his parents at the age of ten, a move that he initially found traumatic. He was dependent on making friends with very different people and developing joint projects. But he soon found that it suited him well.
He doesn’t lack self-confidence. He likes to portray himself as a shaman, high priest or magician – the self-portraits in the large hall tell of this. Almost life-size, he appears as a “sorcerer”, a magician who turns around his own axis as if in a ritual dance. In “Mama III” he sits cross-legged as a naked figure, engrossed in carving a tiny sculpture of his mother. His naked body bears tattoos that others, guided by Althamer, carved into the surface before firing the clay figure. A three-storey doll’s house also provides a glimpse into the artist’s life, a reminder that Althamer and his first wife Monika initially made a living from making dolls. The artist lies asleep between work in progress in the chaotic basement, while Monika sews clothes for the dolls standing around in the attic. In the middle, daughter Weronika is sitting on the sofa with her boyfriend and is watching a film she made herself on TV.
His work must be quite a nightmare for restorers
Althamer constantly involves others in the creative process. In 2008 he and his followers set out to conquer the world under the label “Common Task”. He walked or drove ahead, wrapped in gold from head to toe, the disciples wore golden astronaut suits – some of them and a small sculpture in the exhibition remind us of this. In the meantime he has traveled to Brazil, Belgium, Great Britain and Mali with “Common Task”. There, during one of his tours, he also met the sculptor Youssouf Dara, whom he invited to Bródno. This collaboration resulted in the “Afronaut”, a figure that is also composed of African sculptures.
For restorers, his complex but often rather fragile work must be quite a terror. He likes to play with a wide variety of materials, forming shapes out of wood, stones, twigs, shells and steel, but he also uses polyethylene and other plastics. Funny is the installation “God bless America”, which he created in New York with Jim Costanzo, Donald Sing and Roman Stánczak: a life-size figure made of natural materials with a huge US flag in his hand, composed of nothing but dollar bills. Also worth mentioning is the sculpture “Avenue of the Rising Sun”, a design for a monument commemorating journalists and artists who championed democratic ideals in Belarus and were imprisoned. The video of the performance “Agnus Dei” will be presented to the public for the first time in Regensburg. In 2012, Althamer recreated the famous Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eyck brothers in St. Bavo’s Cathedral and translated the central image of the winged altar, the Adoration of the Lamb, into a light summery performance.
And the wheelchair users? Since 1993, Althamer has been giving ceramics courses in a center for people with multiple sclerosis. A small room in the Regensburg exhibition is dedicated to the “Nowolipie Group”, named after the street on which the center is located. Joanna Grodzicka, the woman in religious habit, is the initiator of the group. She entered the monastery when she was miraculously cured of her illness. Althamer pays tribute to her and a number of other group members with a small-format sculpture each. But here, too, he not only presents his works, but also the joint works of the artists’ collective, which over the years “worked out a blueprint for the ego of an artist with him – an artist who is an extraordinary man” (Althamer).
Pavel Althamer. Lovis Corinth Prize 2022, until September 11, Art Forum East German Gallery Regensburg.