Miroslaw Balka

Miroslaw Balka born 1958, Warsaw, Poland where he lives and works. 

Comprising installation, sculpture and video, Balka’s work has a bare and elegiac quality that is underlined by the careful, minimalist placement of objects, as well as the gaps and pauses between them. Balka’s work deals with both personal and collective memories, especially as they relate to his Catholic upbringing and the collective experience of Poland’s fractured history. Through the investigation of domestic memories and public catastrophe, Balka explores how subjective traumas are translated into collective histories and vice versa. His materials are simple, everyday objects and things, but also powerfully resonant of ritual, hidden memories and the history of Nazi occupation in Poland. The artist brings the viewer into a position of experience and absorption and as less of an observer and more of a witness. He create spaces where it is pertinent to acknowledge what it means to remember.

Bałka had numerous solo exhibitions. Among others, he exhibited in Pirelli HangarBicocca (Milano), Tate Modern (London), Collection Lambert (Avignon), NCCA (Moscow), AdK - Akademie der Künste (Berlin), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Museo de Arte Moderna (Rio de Janeiro). He was part of various group exhibitions, including in AdK - Akademie der Künste (Berlin), MOCAK (Krakow), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Tel Aviv), National Museum of Art (Osaka), Weserburg | Museum für moderne Kunst (Bremen), Mumok (Vienna), NAMOC (Beijing). His works are in the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington D.C.), Israel Museum (Jerusalem), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Museum of Contemporary Art  (Los Angeles), mumok (Vienna), and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), among others.