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| Catching Wilhelm Krišs Salmanis, Artist Wilhelm Sasnal 05.09.2009.–10.01.2010. K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen art collection, Düsseldorf | |
| Canadian director Robert Lepage has been called a wizard by the global press because he has restored a sense of wonderment and surprise to the theatre, and the capacity for an audience to be emotionally moved. Robert Lepage is one of the most significant boundary shifters in world theatre. Lepage considers the emotional emptiness is often left by modern theatre as a vital issue: “When I watch theatre today this is a problem for me. I see how well it is produced, how great the actors are, yet I am left wondering why these people on the stage are crying, screaming and suffering, but nothing is happening inside me. Why do I pay money to see people suffering? I can see that in many other places for free. I want to cry, laugh, wonder and sense intelligence in the theatre.” Lepage has firm views regarding the boredom he often experiences in theatre. He believes this is caused by the fact that theatre is lagging behind the other art forms, it uses outdated storytelling vocabulary and the experience that people have gained from watching other types of art makes them quickly tire of the paucity of communication they are offered in the theatre. | |
 Wilhelm Sasnal. Shoah (Forest). Oil on canvas. 40x40cm. 2002 | |
| In Germany art is not only exhibited, viewed and assessed, but is also discussed a great deal. Artists’ achievements are routinely described in extensive annotations, while during special events both artists and viewers reflect publicly on the works. And there are no nervous knots in the stomach in anticipation of silence when, after a lecture, the inevitable “Are the any questions from the audience?” sounds out, because members of the audience always have things to ask. Even obviously weak works are discussed, and sometimes it turns out that they are not so weak after all. But on this occasion, the number of viewers can be counted on one hand, there is no discussion and the work is adjudged to be weak. This assemblage business is passé and Fire doesn’t appeal visually either. But the next works on display suggest that the artist isn’t that interested in such “appearances.” Each successive painting seems significantly different to the previous one. After domestic scenes I look at a provocatively framed black and white man’s trouser front (Robert Smithson), right next to it you find a work with no subject at all. The canvas is densely packed with thick tiny red and orange daubs. I start to become interested in whether these pictures might not form an impression of the works as a whole after all. I’ve paid for my ticket, so I read the title of the abstraction. Eyelid. This makes me jump. I know what he has meant here. The red spots that dance around the inside of my closed eyelids may be prettier, but the idea is clear. And what disturbs me is not that something familiar has been depicted, but rather that I may have been too hasty in forming a negative opinion. Using simple, advertising skills, Sasnal has created an engrossing image which in conjunction with the text catches you in a place unprotected by scornfulness. You don’t have to look far to find similar examples. Like something from an abstract expressionist textbook, a white blot on a black background turns inside out and I see the same black jacket with a woollen lining – this time the view is from the inside of the hood. Only this small aperture links it to the world outside (Inside the Hood). | |
 Wilhelm Sasnal. The Population Deployment 1994. Oil on canvas. 120x120cm. 2000 | |
| The decorative red circle compositions created as a diptych in 2000 and which seem suitable for any fancy big city Euro-office block become the condemnation of those working in such buildings after I read the titles The Population Deployment 1972 and The Population Deployment 1994. An artist as clear thinking as Sasnal would not have missed the fact that his works differ greatly from one another. This would be easier to explain if absolutely all of Sasnal’s paintings were conceptual in nature. In that case, the variations in form would only be logical. But the impressively large exhibition (it is an overview of his creative output over the last decade featuring 89 of 500 or so works made in this period) also includes paintings based in emotion and reflection (portraits of his wife, friends and historic figures), depictions of domestic situations and landscape studies. There are also variations on a single theme, characteristic of painting, though in truth these are few and do not bear the hallmarks of reproduction. For Sasnal these are partisans, the church and Concorde airplanes. The painter’s signature style also varies from fashionably clumsy daubs to graphic solutions, from illustrative realism to demonstrations of free brushwork and talent for nuanced colour. When speaking about Sasnal, art critics often mention the name of Luc Tuymans. Yet this would also call for references to art history as a whole, 20th century propaganda materials, photo journalism and 1980’s Polish punk music. The exhibition also brought to mind the new generation of Latvian painters. If I hadn’t known where I was, I could have well perceived this as an international group exhibition with the participation of Jānis Avotiņš, Ēriks Apaļš and Inga Meldere. I understand that in viewing the individual works I will only gain an overview after each of them is described. But how can we speak of an artist’s works as a whole if they don’t form a coherent whole? Ulrich Loock, one of the authors who have written extensively about Sasnal, highlights the painter’s work with photographic images. In his view, the seemingly irrational selection of the most varied motifs and their recreation through the means of painting gives the objects back its materiality stolen by technology, simultaneously freeing them from the curse of capturing the fleeting moment inevitably imposed by photography. By choosing photographs which already from the beginning hide the depicted object (for example the face hidden from the lens in Anka), or by charging conventional images with painting, a specific viewpoint is achieved that can turn, in an instant, into its opposite, a world-embracing generalisation. Loock points to this as the monopoly of painting which cannot be repeated by heading in the opposite direction. Perhaps in relation to Sasnal there is some truth in his view, but its power is diminished by the debatable interpretation of photography. It is worth remembering the last Venice Biennale, where Korean artist Atta Kim showed the photographs resulting from an eight hour exposition or 10,000 photo snaps merged into one, nuanced grey photo-painting, which clearly freed photography from specificity. To quote Sasnal himself: “Painting sometimes reminds me of a pointless knack which is perfect but lacks wit and energy. I want to keep as much distance as possible from what I am doing so that I can observe it from a broader perspective. When I’m painting I have the feeling that I know nothing. Often it is the picture and not I that takes the lead.” I come to the conclusion that it is virtually impossible to characterise Sasnal’s overall achievement as an undivided whole. The painter is interested in the impression created by each individual work, echoing the overabundance of heterogeneous images typical of our times; a visit to his exhibition is akin to an internet image search at a moment when you don’t want to do anything else. Sasnal’s programme is to avoid any kind of pictorial programme at all. This is not an odd decision, because it leaves him free from the dictates of the market, selecting subjects and solutions with his own interests as criteria. But it is at the same time an admirable choice, because it rarely occurs in combination with public acclaim and financial success. It appears that by pursuing this anti-programme completely consistently, the artist has managed to please the over-stimulated 21st century optic nerve with its constant craving for new and rapidly changing visual stimuli. The things that directly attract the artist’s attention become clear once you know his biography. Born in 1972 in Poland, in the 1990’s he studied architecture and painting in Krakow, where he still lives and works. He developed as an artist in the first decade of capitalism, when he joined the group Ładnie (‘Pretty’). The aim of this group was to produce realistic art which would depict post-socialist society in a consciously simplified manner, capturing its utterly trivial obsessions with new clothes, electronics and foreign travel. The wonderment of the 1990’s has obviously become Sasnal’s compass in this decade too, allowing every subsequent work to be a separate event which is a discovery for both the artist and his audience. /Translator into English: Filips Birzulis/ | |
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