Sculptor, performance artist, actionist, author of installations and videos. Born 12 May 1967 in Warsaw, lives in Warsaw.

He studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts between 1988-1993, earning a degree in sculpture under Prof Grzegorz Kowalski. Exhibiting from 1991 together with his colleagues from the Kowalski studio, such as, among others, Katarzyna Kozyra, Jacek Markiewicz, or Jacek Adamas, he was a co-author of the phenomenon of Kowalnia ("smithy"), one of the leading collectives of young Polish art of the 1990s.

In 2004, Althamer received the prestigious Vincent Van Gogh Biannual Award, founded by the Broere Charitable Foundation of the Netherlands.

From the very beginning of his career, Althamer employed various media, besides the classic techniques practicing performance, happening, or actions (often fleeting and temporary ones). However, he has never abandoned the discipline he studied - sculpture. From his graduation-project self-portrait ("Paweł Althamer", 1993), to a balloon likeness of the artist floating in the air over Milan ("Balloon", 2007), Althamer's works have often been sculptures (even if made using untypical materials), or objects revealing sculptural roots. The artist continues to teach ceramics workshops for Grupa Nowolipie, a group of patients with multiple sclerosis and other diseases. Sculpture in Althamer's practice usually has a totemic or fetishistic quality (it is no accident that a 1991 trip to Africa played a major role in shaping the artist's creative personality). Of such nature were especially his early figures, made of grass, straw, animals hides and intestines ( "Standing Figure", 1991; "Nature Study", 1991 - see photos), and above all his hyper-realistic self-portrait, part of his Academy graduation project. The piece was in fact ambiguous in meaning - it could refer to the academy-required artistic mastery and the artist's required ability (in keeping with a paradigm dating back to antiquity) to create mimetic representations of reality, but could also be seen as a literal substitute of the author. The figure was supposed to stand in for Althamer during the project's defence - the artist himself left the room, leaving the professors facing his self-portrait and watching a video showing Althamer leave the academy, go to the woods, take off his clothes, and "commune with nature". The artist has used a similar technique as with the said self-portrait to create representations of his family members, e.g. "Paweł and Monika" (2002), "Weronika" (2001), made in a small barn in a village in the Alps, with a girl's skull inside the figure's head, or a small-sized sculpted representation of the artist's newborn son (2006). Althamer also makes miniature models of reality that resemble dollhouses (e.g. a model of the Foksal Gallery Foundation office, employees included) - for a couple of years he and his wife earned their living making rag dolls which they sold through souvenir or toy stores.

"Paweł and Monika" 2002; "Weronika" Amden 2001

Althamer's sculptures, emphasising the organicness and materiality of the human body, its temporariness, made of impermanent materials, seem to be a counterpoint for his search for alternative modes of experiencing reality and discovering the inner world, "altered states of consciousness", often through ascetic isolation, but also with the help of narcotic or hallucinogenic substances. Already as a second-year student he tried, with fellow student Mikołaj Miodowski, to play a telepathic game of chess ("Connection of Two Points", academic year 1989/1990 - see photos). In the 1990s, especially during his Academy studies, Althamer conducted numerous (often hours-long) performances that involved radical sensory deprivation. In a 1993 interview given to fellow artist Artur Żmijewski, Althamer said,

"When the attempt takes place in public, it becomes a spectacle, a means of communicating my experiments, and that weakens the experience. I lose sight of the question and start to communicate. My most powerful experiences occur beyond art, beyond creation, and they are utterly spontaneous."

"The Cardinal" 1991

"Self-Portrait" plein-air in Dłużew 1991

In 1991, in the presence of his fellow students from the Kowalski studio, Althamer smoke marijuana sitting in a tin washtub filled with water and a purple solution of papier-mâché, to the sound of recorded religious music ("The Cardinal"). During a plein-air in Dłużew that year, dressed in a white suit, he changed into a "snowman", sitting outside for two hours in freezing temperatures ("Self-Portrait"). He later recounted,

"I hear the voices of people riding on a horse wagon. I recognise them, these are people from here, from the village. I hear they've noticed something and are intrigued. They think I'm a snowman made by the students. ... Pain in my spine and limb numbness (the cold doesn't bother me so much) cause me to stop."

At another time the artist deprived his body of sensory stimuli by encasing himself in a plastic bag slowly filled with cold water ("Water, Time, Space", 1991). A material manifestation of those experiments were, for instance, the "Boat and the Spacesuit" (1991), sculptures serving as meditative tools. According to the artist, these objects were supposed

"Boat and the Spacesuit" 1991

"Water, Time, Space" 1991

"to present the body and soul in a tangible, physical manner. You could also perceive them as instruments for practicing dying. The boat would be an equivalent of the coffin, and the spacesuit - of the body."

Ten years later, Althamer built in the centre of Warsaw (in the immediate vicinity of the Foksal Gallery Foundation office) his "Tree House" (2001), a place of solitude and "wildness" in the very heart of the urban agglomeration, which functioned there for a couple of months. Suggesting a metaphorical, or even romantic detachment from the overwhelming civilisation was also Althamer's happening in Berlin in 2002, where, dressed in a formal suit and equipped with all the attributes of a businessman, he appeared by a fountain at the Sony Centre (where many "white collars" work) and took off his clothes, discarding the businessman attributes - suit, mobile phone, briefcase - the image of a white collar worker who has abandoned his identity ("Self-Portrait as Businessman", 2002).

"Hashish"

"LSD"

"Peyote"

"The Truth Serum"

"Hypnosis" 2003

"Hypnosis" 2004

Resembling Althamer's student-era work is also the film series, recorded with Artur Żmijewski, called "The So Called Waves and Other Phenomena of the Mind" (2003-2004). The films document Althamer exploring various ways of non-rational cognition, which he deems to be means of broadening human perception, using consciousness-altering substances (LSD, peyote, hashish, the truth serum) or hypnosis. During one of the hypnosis sessions shown in the film the artist returns to one of his earlier incarnations, becoming Abram, a small boy wandering around the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto with his dog, Burek. Althamer represented the vision in the sculpture "Abram and Buruś" (2007), made of bronze and meant to be displayed in the open air. The boy figure holds a real-life wooden stick that dog walkers can use to play with their own pets.

"Observer" 1995

"Weronika" 2004

One of the films of the "So Called Waves..." series is "Weronika" (2004), showing the artist "discover the world anew" during a walk with his daughter. In many of his works and actions, Althamer tries to persuade the viewers to perceive the world around them more creatively. Again, one of the materialisations of this idea is the "Observer" (1995), a figure sculpted with wire mesh, viewing the world using a film camera. An attempt to perceive the world with a "fresh eye" was the artist's 1995 action in Bydgoszcz, where he played an "Astronaut" exploring, as it were, a new planet. The artist walked around the city dressed in a homemade spacesuit, recording what he saw with a video camera. The recorded image was shown live on a monitor mounted on the artist's back.

"The Exhibition" Galeria a.r.t, Płock, 1991

Foksal Gallery 1996

Althamer has often challenged stereotypical notions of a place by completely redesigning the gallery space or manipulating the viewer's perception. During his first solo exhibition (titled, somewhat perversely, "The Exhibition", 1991), he restored Płock's Galeria a.r.t., run by his fellow student Jacek Markiewicz, to its original function. He cleaned the place, washed the floor, scraped the white paint off the tile stove, and brought the necessary pieces of furniture so that the gallery again became an apartment, as it once used to be. The artist spent several days there, video-filming the neighbours' daily life. In 1996, Althamer transformed the cramped space of Foksal Gallery into a kind of waiting room, covering the floor with white linoleum, mounting white bus seats, and adding an extra glass door. When you entered the space, you found out that it led you outside, to a small garden, through a hole knocked out in the wall in the place usually reserved for painting exhibits. The installation was later likened to a decompression chamber or a meditation room. Three years later, in 1999, the artist created a frame for viewing a fragment of the park and courtyard adjoining the Foksal Gallery building by covering them with a large white tent. Remaining there for two early-spring months, the tent distorted natural plant vegetation. At another time, Althamer transformed the space of the prestigious Berlin gallery, the Neugerriemschneider, into a picturesque ruin (2003). The gallery remained open (or rather desolate) 24 hours a day, which was interpreted as a vanitas metaphor, or even a pessimistic forecast for the "art world". Another place-revealing project was the "Path" trodden by the artist during the Skulptur Projekte in Münster in 2007.

Gallery Neugerriemschneider, Berlin

"Path" 2007, Sculpture Projects Münster

Thematising the issue of a "creative" perception of reality most fully were Althamer's projects aimed at creating an illusion of reality using the filmic model. For the first time the artist employed the method during the 2000 "Manifesta" in Ljubljana, where for three weeks every day at a certain hour ten hired actors "enacted reality" to the accompaniment of a musical piece played on oboe by a street busker ( "Motion Picture" - see photos).

"Real Time Movie", Carnegie International

In 2001, Althamer invited the audience of a lecture he was to deliver at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw for a short "Walk" (see photos). At its end, participants were handed itineraries which revealed that some of the reality they had passed on their way was orchestrated, enacted by hired actors. The concept's subsequent realisations provided for well-known actors to participate. And so in Pittsburgh in 2004, Peter Fonda played a passer-by, in Warsaw in 2005 Mirosław Baka and Agnieszka Grochowska were featured ("Film"), and in London in 2007 Jude Law played a man buying a fish ("Real-Time Movie"). In all three cases the "film" playing in reality was announced by trailers, which anticipated reality, as it were, because the films they advertised simply did not exist. Thus the "real" reality was mixed with an orchestrated one, as well as proving equally interesting. In effect, every participant became a filmmaker, "shooting" a movie from his own point of view.

Many of Althamer's projects mixed reality with art, making art part of reality or using it as a pretext for action. That was the case in 2000 when the artist asked the residents of a large tower block in Warsaw's Bródno district to turn on or off the lights in their apartments so that the lights formed the inscription "2000" ( "Bródno 2000" - see photos). The happening turned into something of a local festival.

"Astronaut 2", Documenta X, Kassel, 1997

Althamer has sometimes hired people unconnected in any way with the art world to participate in his actions. As early as in 1992 he hired homeless people to stand on the street as "observers" as part of a promotional campaign for the daily newspaper "Obserwator codzienny". For his happening/installation "Astronaut 2" at "Documenta X" in Kassel, Althamer hired a man to live for the duration of the show in a trailer converted into a living space. The man, also as an alter ego of the artist himself, signified a stranger, also in the sense of an immigrant. During Althamer's exhibition in Chicago in 2001, in turn, a Polish immigrant living in the US, the artist's friend from high school, earning his living as a wall painter, every day painted the gallery's walls a different colour. At another time, for the opening of the show "Neue Welt" in Frankfurt in 2001, Althamer invited immigrants dressed up as curators. The artist's show at New York's Wrong Gallery in 2003 had him hire a couple of illegal immigrants to first ruin and then repair the gallery's main door and a composition arranged by the artist. So it is rightly that British theoretician and curator Claire Bishop counts Althamer, besides, for instance, Artur Żmijewski, Santiago Sierra, or Phil Collins, among artists operating through other people, involving them in their actions on the basis of collaboration or mediation, which Bishops calls "delegated performance". But rather than on the ambiguity of a situation suspended between helping another person and exploiting them, characteristic, for instance, for Sierra's work, Althamer focuses on the aspect of cooperation, pleasure, and fun. For the awarding ceremony of the Van Gogh Prize in Maastricht, for instance, Althamer brought with him a group of teenage "homeboys" from Bródno. He has also carried out numerous projects together with Grupa Nowolipie, where he teaches ceramics workshops. Among their joint projects was "Double Agent", curated by Claire Bishop. The exhibition, besides ceramics pieces created by Althamer's students, featured two films made during the workshop: "Do It Yourself" (2004), a collaboration with Artur Żmijewski, and "Flight" (2007), showing the Grupa Nowolipie members take a sightseeing flight over Warsaw aboard an old biplane. Sometimes, Althamer actually withdraws to create room for others. He turned his solo show at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2006 ("Au Centre Pompidou") into a group exhibition featuring, on an equal footing with himself, eleven young artists based in France. The show was preceded by workshops in Poland and France. Thus, challenging the notion of the "art-world celebrity", Althamer was able to make it possible for a number of young artists to debut in France's leading exhibition space. Similarly, in 2006, Althamer and Żmijewski turned down invitations for solo shows at CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw on behalf of a project called "Elections.pl", which they invited the former Kowalnia students to participate in. The project built on Kowalnia's flagship exercise known as "Common space - private space", an exercise in non-verbal communication, this time carried out outside the academy context. Among the invited participants were Grupa Nowolipie and pre-schoolers.

Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, June 2008.

Photos courtesy of the Foksal Gallery Foundation

"Balloon", "One of Many", Foundazione Nicola Trussardi, Mediolan, 2007

"Standing Figure" 1991 and "Nature Study" 1991 back to text

"Connection of Two Points" 1989/1990 back to text

"Walk" back to text

"Motion Picture", Manifesta 3, Lubljana, 2000 back to text

Selected solo exhibitions:

• 1991 - "Wystawa" - Galeria a.r.t., Płock
• 1993 - "Dyplom" - Galeria a.r.t., Płock; "Studium z natury" - Galeria a.r.t., Płock
• 1994 - "Bajka" - Galeria WOK, Warsaw
• 1995 - Galeria Miejsce, Cieszyn
• 1996 - Galeria Foksal, Warsaw; "Życie pozagrobowe" - Galeria Kronika, Bytom
• 1997 - Kunsthalle, Basel; "Kosmonauta" - Galeria a.r.t., Płock; "Bródno" - Galeria Przyjaciół A.R., Warsaw
• 1998 - "Wystawa" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
• 1999 - Galeria Foksal, Warsaw
• 2000 - "Bródno 2000" - Galeria Foksal, Warsaw; "Biały autobus" - BWA Zielona Góra
• 2001 - "Domek na drzewie" - Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw
• 2002 - "Unsichtbar" - Alexanderplatz, Berlin; "Prisoners" - Westfälischen Kunstverein, Münster; Trieste Contemporanea, Triest; Chiesa di San Matteo, Galleria Claudio Polleschi Arte Contemporanea, Lucca
• 2003 - Wrong Gallery, New York; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; So genannte Wellen und Andere Phaenomene des Geistes - Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf
• 2004 - "Pawel and Vincent" - Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht
• 2005 - "Paweł Althamer zachęca" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw
• 2006 - "Au Centre Pompidou" - Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• 2007 - "One of Many" - Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Mediolan; "Black Market" - neugerriemschneider, Berlin

Selected group exhibitions:

• 1991 - "Magowie i Mistycy" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
• 1992 - "Dialog dzieł i postaw" - Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej, Orońsko; "Die andere Seite" - Ludwig Forum, Aachen; "Studium aktu" - Galeria a.r.t., Płock
• 1993 - "Unvollkommen" - Museum Bochum, Bochum; "Sonsbeek '93" - International Biennale of Art, Arnhem
• 1994 - "Germination 8" - Academy St. Joost, Breda; Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw (1995)
• 1995 - "Antyciała" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; "OIKOS" - Muzeum Okręgowe im. Leona Wyczółkowskiego, Bydgoszcz; "Transhumacja" - Painting Gallery, Kaunas, Lithuania
• 1996 - "Ja i Aids" - Galeria Czereja, Warsaw; Galeria a.r.t., Płock
• 1997 - "Documenta X" - Kassel; "Passport: Exchange, (Ex)Change" - Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Arthouse Multimedia Centre, Dublin
• 1998 - "Parteitag II" - Galeria a.r.t., Płock; "W tym szczególnym momencie" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; "Bez paszportu" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw; "There is nothing like a bad Coincidence" - Galeria Medium, Bratislava
• 1999 - "Figura w Rzeźbie Polskiej xix i xx wieku" - Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej, Orońsko and Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw; "City Sleepers, midnight Walkers" - Amsterdam; "Fauna" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw; "Welcome to the Art World" - Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
• 2000 - "Manifesta 3" - European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana; "Szare w Kolorze" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw; "Amateur 1900-2000" - Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Göteborg; "Na wolności / W końcu" - Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden; Muzeum im. Xawerego Dunikowskiego - Pałac Królikarnia, Warszawa (2001); Muzeum Narodowe w Szczecinie (2001); "Scena 2000" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
• 2001 - "Ausgeträumt..." - Secession, Vienna; "Progetto Bovisa" - pac, Triennale DI Milano, Milan; "Neue Welt" - Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main; "Museum unserer Wünsche" - Museum Ludwig, Cologne; "Enjoy / Survive" - Migros Museum für Gegenwartkunst, Zurich; "Krzątanina" - Galeria BWA, Wrocław; "Depozyt Galerii Foksal" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; "Uważaj Wychodząc z własnych snów. Możesz się znaleźć w cudzych" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw
• 2002 - "I promise it's political" - Museum Ludwig, Cologne; "Rzeczywiście. Młodzi są realistami" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; "In Prag" - Galerie Văclava Špăly, Prague
• 2003 - "Dreams and Conflicts - The Viewer's Dictatorship" - La Biennale di Venezia, Venice; "Sztuka Współczesna dla wszystkich dzieci" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw; "Ukryte w słońcu" - Hotel "Pod Brunatnym Jeleniem", Cieszyn (organised by Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw); "Bring on the Clowns" - Frieze Art Fair, London; "Now what? Dreaming a better World in six Parts" - BAK, Utrecht; "Spojrzenia 2003" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw; "Art Focus" - Israel Museum, Jerusalem (wspólnie z Arturem Żmijewskim); "Sposób na życie" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia, Gdańsk

  "Untitled", "Koniec egzotycznej podróży" - roof of the Foksal Gallery Foundation, 2006

• 2004 - "Academy East / West" - Tanzquartier, Vienna; "Prym" - Galeria BWA, Zielona Góra; "Warszawa - Moskwa" - Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warszawa and Tretyakovskaya Gallery, Moscow; "Carnegie International" - Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; "Utopia Station" - Haus der Kunst, Munich; "Powinność i bunt" - Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw; "Artist's Favorites" - Institute of Contemporary Art, London; "Rzeźbiarze fotografują" - Królikarnia, Warsaw; "Under the white-red Flag. New Art from Poland" - Estonian Art Museum, Tallinn; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius; National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow
• 2005 - "Das unmögliche Theater / Teatr niemożliwy" - Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Barbican Art Galleries, London (2006); Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw (2006); 1. MoscoW Biennale of contemporary Art - Moscow; 9th International Instnbul Biennial - Istanbul; "Akademie. Kunst lehren und lernen" - Kunstverein, Hamburg
• 2006 - "Of Mice and Man". 4th Berlin Biennial for contemporary Art - Berlin; "1, 2, 3... awangarda" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2008); "You won't feel a Thing" - Kunsthaus Dresden, Dresden; "Koniec egzotycznej podróży" - Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw; "Wybory.pl" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; "Demos Kratos - Władza ludu" - Galeria Klimy Bocheńskiej, Warsaw; Galeria Bielska BWA, Bielsko-Biała (2007); "The Grand Promenade" - EMST, Athens
• 2007 - "Skulptur Projekte 07" - Münster; "The Present: The Monique Zaifen Collection" - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; "Art Machines. Machine Art" - Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; "The World as a Stage" - Tate Modern, London; "Volksgarten. Politics of belonging" - Kunsthaus Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz; "Fractured Figure" - Deste, Athens; "Dream & Trauma" - Kunsthalle Wien, "Mumok", Vienna
• 2008 - "Double Agent" - Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; "Mimétisme" - Center for Contemporary Art, Antwerp; "Odczarowywanie - Proces ciągły" - Galeria BWA Awangarda, Wrocław; "Spastykowanie" - Galeria Sektor I, Katowice

"Bródno 2000" Warsaw back to text

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