Pawel Althamer, Aliens, 2022

wood, marker, sand, plastic, 38.00 x 102.50 x 7.00 cm

Born in 1967, Polish sculptor, performer, video artist and art installation artist. Graduate of the Faculty of Sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Grzegorz Kowalski. He was a co-founder of an informal group of artists called "Kowalski's Studio," or "Kowalnia," which is considered one of the most interesting groupings of young art in the 1990s, including Katarzyna Kozyra, Artur Żmijewski, Jacek Markiewicz and Katarzyna Górna. Althamer started with sculpture and continuously, while simultaneously realizing other projects, continues to work in it to this day - despite the fact that he uses unusual materials, often applies unobvious form, in some works only gently referring to sculptural matter, it is the main core of his artistic activity. In some works it has a totemic character, in others there are fetishization motifs, and still others are characterized by hipperrealism. Through the use of perishable materials, Althamer gives expression to the materiality, impermanence and organic nature of the human body. As a performer, he has often cut himself off from the outside world, exploring altered states of consciousness, often aided by psychoactive drugs, asceticism and isolation. At the same time, he encourages people to take a deeper look at reality and broaden their perception. Althamer is the recipient of the Vincent van Gogh Prize, awarded by the Dutch de Broere Foundation in 2004, as well as the Special Award for the Creator of Culture, which he received in 2010 at the "Polityka" Passports gala. He is one of the best-known Polish artists abroad, with his works in the collections of Tate London, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Israel Museum. His works have been exhibited in solo exhibitions, including at the Centre Pompidou Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, Germany. He has also participated in group exhibitions, including the Istanbul Biennale in 2005, the Berlin Biennale in 2006, the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea in 2006 and the Venice Biennale in 2013.