Museion presents
Pawel Althamer
The exhibition Polyethylene
opening 25/05/2012
The performance Common Task, Bolzano (2012)
from 23/05 to 25/05/2012
Museion in Bolzano is staging a double event devoted to Pawel Althamer: the solo exhibition “Polyethylene”
and the performance project “Common Task, Bolzano (2012)”, appearing in Italy for the very first time.
Polyethylene: science fiction meets Baroque.
On occasion of the Pawel Althamer exhibition Museion will be invaded by around seventy entirely white human
figures. This crowd of pallid sculptures, part zombies, part creatures from an unknown civilization –
positioned singly or in groups - will take over the exhibition space on the fourth floor. The result of a
collective creative process, the figures were created for the exhibition Almech at the Deutsche
Guggenheim in Berlin. Pawel Althamer’s work has always explored the roots of classic sculpture,
subverting its main principles. During the Berlin exhibition the artist and his staff created plaster casts of the
faces of volunteers involved in the project: the staff of the Deutsche Guggenheim, people from the art world,
but above all members of the public. The masks, which though highly realistic, also look totem-like and
surreal, were grafted onto bodies of “synthetic white flesh”, aka polyethylene. Channelling everything from
classical to Baroque sculpture, through the funerary art of the Middle Ages to comic strip aesthetics
and sci-fi films, the sculptures are of great emotional impact, evoking multiple associations. Each of
them embodies both a single story and infinite stories, and together they form a social sculpture which
extends beyond the confines of the museum. With the Pawel Althamer show Museion continues its
exploration of the different languages of contemporary sculpture, and its reflections on the permeability of
the museum venue.
In parallel to the exhibition in Museion, there will also be a solo show devoted to Pawel Althamer at the
Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany (29.05 – 06.10.2012), and the two events will be connected by the
performance “Common Task”.
Common Task, Bolzano (2012)
After numerous solo and group shows, including at the MoMA Oxford in 2009, the performance project
Common Task is being presented in Museion, its very first showing in Italy.
For two days before the opening of the solo show in Museion, around 20 performers (including the artist)
travelling from Poland in a gold bus, will visit and explore both the museum and the city of Bolzano.
The performers – actually friends, relatives and neighbours of Althamer’s – will wander, astronaut-like, among
the artist’s sculptures on show in the exhibition Polyethylene in Museion, and also through the city
streets of Bolzano and valleys of the South Tyrol region, exploring local traditions like the wood carving of Val
Gardena. Their actions are only partly planned: as in previous versions of the performance, they will mostly take
their cue from encounters with the local community and the staff of the museum. Common Task therefore takes
the form of an authentic “time-based” exhibition, unfolding in a temporal rather than a set spatial dimension.
It is something viral and uncontrollable compared to the canons of the museum exhibition, literally
invading the venue and forging a connection with the urban setting and the background of cultural traditions that
shapes it.
The performance is part of the broader Common Task project that the artist initiated in 2008 as a series of
actions. The idea and title draw on Althamer’s studies under Grzegorz Kowalski at the Warsaw Academy of Fine
Arts, with his community-based teaching methods. Common Task is conceived as a science fiction film shot in
real time and set against the backdrop of contemporary society, exploring the elements most symbolic of change.
Pawel Althamer was born in 1967 in Warsaw, where he lives and works. He studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Warsaw. Solo shows include those at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (2001), the Centre Pompidou in Paris
(2006), the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan (2007) and the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (2011). He has taken part
in group exhibitions at leading institutions like the New Museum in New York (2008), the Tate Modern in London (2007), the
Haus der Kunst in Munich (2004) and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne (2002 and 2001), and numerous international events
including the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005), the Venice Biennale (2003), Documenta 10 in Kassel (1997)
and Skulptur Projekte in Münster (2007). In 2004 he won the Vincent van Gogh Biennial Award for Contemporary Art in
Europe and in 2010 the Aachener Kunstpreis.
On occasion of the exhibition and performance by Pawel Althamer in Museion there will be a catalogue (in Italian,
German and English) with texts by Letizia Ragaglia, Andrea Viliani and Sebastian Cichocki, published by Mousse
Publishing.
Pawel Althamer
Polyethylene. Curated by Letizia Ragaglia
Opening: 25.05.2012, 7 pm. On till 26.08.2012.
Common Task, Bolzano (2012). Curated by Andrea Viliani
from 23.05.2012 to 25.05.2012.
Artist talk
On Thursday 24 May there will be an artist talk with Pawel Althamer and Rein Wolfs, Museion’s guest curator
for 2012.
7.30 pm, Museion Passage.
Museion, museum of modern and contemporary art, via Dante 6 Bolzano.
www.museion.it
Goetz Collection, link
http://www.sammlung-goetz.de
Pawel Althamer, from 29.05. to 06.10.2012
Opening: 27.05.2012, 2-5 pm
Museion’s institutional partners are Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano, Alto Adige, the Fondazione Cassa di
Risparmio di Bolzano and the MUSEION Partners.
Pawel Althamer, Common Task, Bolzano (2012) - event supported by Fiorucci Art Trust.
We would like to thank Mauro De Iorio and the Fondazione Giuliani for their support in producing the
catalogue.
Bolzano, 23.04.2012
Museion Press Office
caterina.longo@museion.it
Caterina Longo t. +39 0471 223428