Wilhelm Sasnal: a short bio
Wilhelm Sasnal is a painter, illustrator and comic strip artist born in 1972 in Tarnów, where he continues to reside and work. He was co-founder of the now-defunct Ładnie art group and today associated with the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw
Wilhelm Sasnal's works are inspired by everyday life and the mass media. He interprets reality in a personal and often private way, creating expressive images which leave lasting impressions. His painting and films are a varied and free play on styles, modes of representation, techniques and means which always remain true to a traditional base, like oil on canvas for his paintings and the movie camera for his films. A strong sense of history and personal memory emerges from his painting which cross over and blend in his works.
Considered by many critics a leading painter of his generation, Wilhelm Sasnal underlines the personal attachment and emotional relationship he has to the themes of his works, all chosen on the basis of attentive observation of his surroundings. The essential issues that continue to interest him are the limits and possibilities of representation and the examining of the process of seeing and perceiving. This explains the enormous stylistic variety of his art.
Sasnal has had solo shows throughout Europe and the USA including Take Me To The Other Side, Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (2014); and those at Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2012); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2011); K21, Düsseldorf, Germany, and Centro De Arte Contemporàneo, Málaga, Spain (both 2009); Wilhelm Sasnal - Years of Struggle, Zacheta Narodowa Sztuki, Warsaw (2008); Matrix, The Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California (2005); and Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2003). He was included in the XXVI Bienal de Sao Paolo, 2004, and was shortlisted, with four other finalists, for the 2004 Vincent Prize at the Stedelijk Museum, 2004. With Anka Sasnal, the artist has written and directed four feature-length films, Huba (2013), It Looks Pretty from a Distance (2011), Fallout (2010), and Swineherd (2009).