One of the most renowned contemporary Polish sculptors. Born in December 1958 in Warsaw. Between 1980-1985 he studied sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, earning a degree under Prof Jan Kucz in 1985.

In 1986, he co-founded, with Mirosław Filonik and Marek Kijewski, an artistic collective called Świadomość Neue Bieriemiennost (exhibiting with it till 1989).

In 1995, he received the "Polityka" Passport award for his original achievements in the field of the fine arts. He is the author of the monument commemorating the victims of the Estonia ferry, erected in Stockholm in 1998. He lives and works in Otwock.

The body, memory, transience, private mythology, are the key themes of Bałka's practice, present already in his earliest projects. All the signs, codes, references contained in them, making up the language of Bałka's art, have their roots in the artist's biography and are fully comprehensible only in its context.

"First Communion Souvenir", Bałka's 1985 graduation project, today in the permanent collection of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, is an almost life-sized coloured-concrete figure of a boy in a First-Communion suit standing by a small table, resting its right hand on its top, preparing for a souvenir photo to be taken. A red heart-shaped pincushion had been attached to the concrete jacket's lapel, and a photograph of a child set into the table top. The graduation project's presentation was a carefully designed event. Bałka invited the professors to an abandoned house in the suburbs. They were taken there by a hired bus, but had to walk the final kilometre on foot. On their way, they were passed by the artist, riding a small bicycle, dressed in a First-Communion suit. Upon entering the house, everyone received a pin they were to insert into the heart-shaped pincushion. The defence of the graduation project, equal to achieving artistic maturity, became a ritual similar to the ceremony confirming one's religious maturity.

In the second half of the 1980s Bałka took part in the New Expression movement, using concrete and jute to make metaphorical figurative sculptures and sculptural compositions. Among the pieces created at the time were, for instance, "Bad News" (1986), "Fireplace" (1986), "St. Adalbert" (1987), "Salt Seller" (1988/1989), or "Shepherdess" (1989). Man and his existence were shown here in the perspective of a dramatic opposition between the physical and the spiritual.

Around 1990 Bałka changed the language of his artistic expression, abandoning literal representations of the human figure on behalf of a more abstract and ambiguous language. The first piece in which he moved away completely from figuration was "Good God" (Galeria Dziekanka, Warsaw). Since then, Bałka has consistently used a vocabulary reduced to the simplest forms and means of expression. The human body is present in his works not through its representation, but in an indirect and veiled way.

"Since then, signs, traces, dimensions, temperatures, crystallised substances, used materials, sometimes sounds, sometimes aromas, have replaced bodily representations. The body is gone - what remains is corporeality." (Jaromir Jedliński)

The artist became interested in the forms that accompany the body on its life's path (the bed, the coffin, the urn), and the traces the body leaves (sweat, urine, sperm, tears). In constructing his simple, ascetic objects or installations, Bałka uses the dimensions of his own body, which serve as a fixed module - a standard. This gives his pieces a strongly personal value. It is further emphasised by the special role played in his practice by the family house in Otwock, where the artist grew up and eventually set up his studio. The house, its history, its material layer and dimensions, have been a permanent source of inspiration for the artist. For his 2001 solo show at Zachęta in Warsaw, Bałka recreated the house's shell in 1:1 scale. Memory, transience, preservation of traces, are the main themes of Bałka's art. Drawing from the source of inner experience, the artist has elevated the elements of personal existence to the rank of a universal message.

The materials with which Bałka creates his works are highly significant. Terrazzo, soap, ash, salt, hair. felt, old planks, rusty rods and sheets, acquire new meanings in the context of a narrative about the human being. Bałka often uses materials with a history, often from his own home. Many of his projects have also employed heat and aromas. At the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993, Bałka showed, among other works, his "Soap Corridor" and terrazzo slabs electrically heated up to the temperature of the human body. Also the Estonia ferry victims monument in Stockholm, for the design of which Bałka won an international competition in 1998, has a fixed temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.

In 1999, Galeria Foksal showed Bałka's exhibition sza (Hush), which also dealt with the theme of death. The gallery was festooned with paper chains made of newspaper obituaries glued together using bone glue. The artist and the gallery curators made them together the way you make Christmas tree chains. Round holes had been cut out in the windows to let in cold air, and the temperature inside was chilly. The opening featured a show by a group of circus artists, fire eaters, which served as a kind of prelude for a funeral ceremony.

Present in Bałka's wanderings around the repository of collective memory are also echoes of the Holocaust, resounding in the seemingly innocent titles of pieces such as "Die Rampe" (1994), "Selection" (1997), or "Winterreise" (2003). The latter work, originally presented at Cracow's Galeria Starmach, is an effect of Bałka's winter trip to the former site of the Birkenau camp, where he made three videos: "Pond", "Bambi 1", and "Bambi 2". They show the pond where the ashes of the camp's cremated victims were deposited, and roe deer approaching the barbed-wire fence. The videos' projections are accompanied by three objects, the "Plates of Hunger", revolving monotonously anti-clockwise. During the opening, Schubert's songs from the Winterreise series were sung, their central theme being human loneliness.

Selected solo exhibitions:

• 1985 - "First Communion Souvenir", Żuków (graduation project)
• 1986 - "Wilki niewilki", TPSP, Warsaw
• 1990
  - "Dobry Bóg", Galeria Dziekanka, Warsaw
  - Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm
• 1991
  - "Stichting De Apple", Amsterdam
  - "April / My body cannot do everything I ask for", Galeria Foksal, Warsaw
• 1992 - "36,6", The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Chicago
• 1994 - "Rampa", Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
• 1999 - "sza", Galeria Foksal, Warsaw
• 2000
  - "Quit", White Cube, London
  - "Between Meals", The National Museum of Art, Osaka
• 2001
  - Around 21 stopni 15'00''E 52 stopni 09'17''N +Go-Go (1985-2001), Zachęta, Warsaw
  - "swept, swept, swept", Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
• 2002 - "Nachtruhe", Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin
• 2003
  - "Winterreise", Galeria Starmach, Cracow
  - "Lebensraum", Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw
  - "Karma", White Cube, London

Selected group exhibitions:

• 1986 - "Ekspresja lat 80.", BWA, Sopot
• 1987 - "Co słychać?", dawna Fabryka Norblina, Warsaw
• 1988
  - "Polish Realities, New Art from Poland", Glasgow, Third Eye Centre
  - Łódź, Muzeum Sztuki
• 1990
  - "Apperto", XLIV Biennale, Venice
  - "Possible Worlds", Sculpture from Europe, Serpentine Gallery, England
• 1991
  - "Metropolis", Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
  - "Kunst, Europa", Kunstverein Bonn
• 1992 - Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany
• 1993 - XLV Biennale, Venice
• 1995 - "Rites of Passage. Art for the End of the Century", Tate Gallery, London
• 1998 - Sao Paulo Biennale
• 1999
  - The Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art
  - "Generations. Polish Art at the End/Beginning of the Century", St. Petersburg
• 2000
  - "Negocjatorzy sztuki. Wobec rzeczywistości", CSW Łaźnia, Gdańsk
  - "Scena 2000", Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw

Author: Ewa Gorządek, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, September 2004.

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