Paweł Althamer will invite the audience of one of the most important venues in New York to participate in his piece, in a gesture of “blurring of the boundaries between public and institutional space, and the distinction between artist and spectator”, as Benjamin Sutton writes on the Artinfo blog.
The artist aims to further encourage this multi-layered exchange, by having street musicians play outside of the Museum, and broadcasting their recordings directly to the space of the third floor inside the building.
The exhibition will also include a retrospective of some of the major pieces from the last twenty years of the artists activity, many of which have been created with other individuals or groups. These will include a series of videos co-produced with Artur Żmijewski, his long-time colleague. The two attended the famous ‘Kowalnia’ workshop of Grzegorz Kowalski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw at the same time, and their creative paths have been meeting many times since. Another project to be seen as part of The Neighbors is Venetians, a sculptural piece which premiered at the 2013 Biennale in Venice.
The curators at the New Museum intend to present Althamer as “instigator, organizer, teacher, scientist, and visionary”.
Paweł Althamer, Venetians, 2013. Exhibition view: Venice Biennale, 2013. Photo: Jens Ziehe, Berlin. Courtesy the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundation
The show will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an interview with the artist and new essays on Althamer’s practice by Boris Groys, Joanna Mytkowska, and Artur Żmijewski.
Since the early 1990s, Althamer (b. 1967 Warsaw) has established a unique artistic practice featuring an expanded approach to sculptural representation and consistently experimental models of social collaboration. Althamer is predominantly known for the figurative sculptures he creates of himself, his family, and various other individuals within his community. Beyond simple portraiture, these sculptures, in addition to the other activities he is involved in, highlight the complex social, political, and psychological networks in which he lives and operates.
Sources: http: blogs.artinfo.com, www.newmuseum.org, www.berlinbiennale.de, own materials
Ed. AM 20.12.2013