Paweł Althamer “Polish Sculpture”

Anton Kern Gallery

[Image: Paweł Althamer "Kosma" (2022) Glazed ceramic, 33 1/2 x 23 5/8 x 17 3/4 in.]

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First and Second Floor Galleries

Anton Kern Gallery presents the Polish artist Paweł Althamer’s first gallery exhibition in the United States. After 30 years of exhibiting throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia and participating in numerous international biennial shows, as well as in Documenta and Skulptur Projekte Münster, it is nothing short of a sensation that the acclaimed sculptor and performance artist has chosen this moment to stage a large-scale exhibition in New York. The artist’s previous appearances in the city were a solo exhibition at the New Museum in 2014, and a performance project at the Wrong Gallery in 2003, a one-square-meter pretend gallery space curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Ali Subotnick, and Maurizio Cattelan.

For the installation at Anton Kern Gallery, Althamer has intertwined four distinct bodies of sculptures into a network of figures that sprawls over the first and second floors. The viewer will find: a group of five life-size dancers; a group of three small figures on found vintage furniture; three ceramic sculptures depicting the artist’s son Kosma; and eight ‘sleeping bag’ portrait sculptures. All works were created in Warsaw over the last year and a half. For all the differences in material and process, these four groups are held together by the common thread of the communal experience, for which the theme of the dance creates the fitting, overarching key and vision.