Miroslaw Balka (born 16 December 1958) is a Polish contemporary sculptor and video artist.
Life and career Miroslaw Balka is a sculptor also active in the field of experimental video and drawing, born in Warsaw, Poland.
In 1985 he graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts,'The Shadow of Life's Mechanisms: A Conversation with Miroslaw Balka', Sculpture magazine, November 2004. where since 2011 he has run the Studio of Spatial Activities in the Faculty of Media Art. Professor nominated by President of Poland in 2012. Between 1986 and 1989 together with Miroslaw Filonik and Marek Kijewski he established the artistic group Consciousness Neue Bieremiennost. He is a member of Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
He was the 1991 winner of the Mies van der Rohe Stipendium from the Kunstmuseum Krefeld. In 2009, Balka installed How It Is, the 10th Unilever Series commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London, which opened on 13 October of that year.Tate Modern website. 'The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka'. Retrieved 17 January 2010.Lewis, Rebecca. 'Miroslaw Balka, How it is', this is tomorrow, 18 November 2009. Retrieved 17 January 2010.
He lives and works in Otwock, Poland, and Oliva, Spain.
Work
The work of Mirosław Bałka is interdisciplinary but centres around sculpture and installation. The sculptor's work is influenced by family background: his grandfather was a gravestone cutter while his father engraved names on tombstones. The themes of many works revolve around historical traumatic events and memories, particularly the memory of World War II.
Initially Bałka created figurative works; later the artist shifted towards more abstract, monumental forms. These remained related to the subject of the human existence - the body in life, death and decay, personal and collective memory. The artist frequently uses steel, cement, salt, foam rubber and felt in his sculptures.
Miroslaw Balka has participated in major exhibitions worldwide including: Venice Biennale (1990, 2003, 2005, 2013; representing Poland in 1993), documenta IX, Kassel (1992), Sydney Biennale (1992, 2006), The Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1995), Sao Paulo Biennale (1998), Liverpool Biennial (1999), Santa Fe Biennale (2006). In 2009 he presented the special project How It Is for the Unilever Series, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London. He is the author of the Memorial to the Victims of the Estonia Ferry Disaster in Stockholm (1997), and numerous spatial works including AUSCHWITZWIELICZKA, Cracow (2010), and HEAL, University of California, San Francisco (2009).
A series of conversations between Miroslaw Balka and professor Zygmunt Bauman were published in 2013.
He has participated in panel discussions with many distinguished speakers including Juan Vicente Aliaga, Julian Heynen, Anda Rottenberg, Kasia Redzisz, Anja Rubik, Joseph Rykwert and Vicente Todoli.
He designed the scenery for Paweł Mykietyn's composition: The Magic Mountain (opera, 2015) and Herr Thaddäus (2017).The prapremiere took place in Szczecin, with Łukasz Konieczny and Barbara Sierosławska (voices from the tape), under baton of Wiktor Kociuban.
Collections
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC Moderna Galerija, Ljubliana Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art, New York Museu Serralves, Porto Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź SFMOMA, San Francisco Tate Modern, London Art Institute of Chicago The Israel Museum, Jerusalem The National Museum of Art, Osaka Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven Center of Contemporary Art, Warsaw Tel Aviv Museum of Art National Museum, Wrocław Eyes of Purification at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb
Selected solo exhibitions 2019 – Random Access Memory, White Cube, London 2017 – DIE SPUREN, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen 2017 – CROSSOVER/S, Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan 2015 – NERW. KONSTRUKCJA, Muzeum Sztuki MS1, Łódź 2014 – DIE TRAUMDEUTUNG 75,32m AMSL, Freud Museum, London 2014 – Fragment, Galeria Labirynt, Lublin 2013 – Fragment, Centre for Contemporary Art / Vinzavod, Moscow 2011 – Fragment, Akademie der Künste, Berlin and Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej, Warsaw 2010 – ctrl, Monasterio San Domingo de Silos / Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid 2010 – Wir Sehen Dich, Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe 2009 – Topography, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford 2009 – How It Is, Turbine Hall, Unilever Series, Tate Modern, London 2007 – Cruzamento, Museo de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro 2006 – Lichtzwang, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen K21, Düsseldorf 2004 – Bon voyage, Musée d’Art Moderne at Contemporain, Strasbourg 2001 – Around 21°15′00″E 52°06′17″N +GO-GO (1985–2001), SMAK, Gent and Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw 2000 – Between meals, The National Museum of Art, Osaka 1997 – Selection, Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo 1995 – Dawn, Tate Britain, London 1994 – 37.1, The Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles 1994 – Laadplatform + 7 werken (Die Rampe), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 1994 – Rampa, Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź 1992 – 36,6, The Renaissance Society, Chicago
References
External links Official web site Miroslaw Balka's solo exhibition at White Cube Mason's Yard London, review by art critic Kostas Prapoglou for Aesthetica Magazine, May 2014