pawel althamer - das himmel

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

In das himmel, Pawel Althamer’s seventh solo exhibition with neugerriemschneider, themes of love, healing and renewal manifest as a universal venue for reflection. Taking shape through a complex of sculptural forms divergent in scale, medium and approach, the presentation becomes an artist’s salon, its role tinged in the wake of its reconfiguration of access and purpose. Decidedly dense in its arrangement, das himmel possesses a material bulk that paradoxically serves as a blank canvas for artist and visitor alike - a sandbox for freely associative connections and projections. A hot tub installed in the gallery’s courtyard from March 2 - 16 acts as a counterpart to the exhibition’s interior component, expanding upon its communal spirit and serving as Althamer’s invitation to deepened internal reflection.

At the conceptual center of das himmel is a sculptural fireplace: a symbol of a home, those that inhabit it and its unique gravitational pull, by way of which physical warmth becomes interpersonal and emotional. Here, two angelic figures, their poses reminiscent of imagery of antiquity and the Renaissance, raise their arms to support a mantel of swirling forms that approximate clouds, smoke and waves. Contained between the pair is a constructed fire, its flames emanating from a dragon inspired by the figures of Pablo Picasso’s 1937 Guernica. The hearth as a locus of exchange radiates to its surroundings, extending outward to a rug-covered floor and an oversized, adapted, throne-like chair, rendering a wider public as participants in Althamer’s domestic. The sculptural continues to pervade das himmel in a vase depicting a couple in heartfelt embrace. Flowers fill the hollowed form in an intimation of life that mirrors the vitality suffusing its setting. A further ceramic portrait, split down its middle, becomes an ode not just to its subject, but to transformation and the happenstance nature of the artistic process. Seen together, the installation’s elements join to a cohesive whole, employing the gallery’s space as a frame that defines and contextualizes its staging.

This environment of Althamer’s making is one that mines his past, attempts to make sense of his present and reaches toward his future in equal measure, taking as its focuses concepts as foundational as the artist’s notion of home, or his earliest pursuits of creating work for sustenance both spiritual and literal. das himmel’s title thus functions as an essential thesis for the exhibition itself - one that grammatically diverges from its German-language source (“der Himmel”), signaling a conscious departure from convention. His oeuvre, and particularly his frequent projects with residents of the disadvantaged Warsaw neighborhood of Bródno where he once lived and worked, feeds into his present here. His close physical connection to artistic legacies, use of generational histories, or his recurring use of doll houses as expanded portraiture mount, with the salon on view functioning as a prototype for elements of the home that he is now constructing, adjacent to his studio, on the outskirts of the city. In looking back, Althamer questions his future and that of his work, pondering how the trappings of life become an integral part of the self, and hold the capacity to nourish growth and fuel restoration, forming a site for metamorphosis and contemplation in an increasingly uncertain world.

Pawel Althamer (b. 1967) has been the subject of international solo exhibitions at museums and institutions including Magasin III, Stockholm (2024); Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg (2022); Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Linz (2020); Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki (2019); New Museum, New York (2014); Goetz Collection, Munich (2012); Museion, Bolzano (2012); Secession, Vienna (2009); Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2007); and Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006). He has also been included in the Kyiv Biennial (2023); Venice Biennale (2013); Gwangju Biennial (2010); Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007); Berlin Biennial (2005); and documenta (1997). Althamer lives and works in Warsaw.