Untitled. From the project Silence
Pawel Althamer
- Category
- MediumPastel, watercolo and varnish on corrugated cardboard
- Dimensions166 × 87 cm
- Сollection
- Inventory numberМСИГ_ОФ_229/2_Г_105/1
- Acquired from
- Year of acquisition2025
Keywords
About the work
Paweł Althamer is a Polish artist, sculptor, and performance artist, and a key figures from Kowalnia (“The Forge”), Grzegorz Kowalski’s studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, which shaped the direction of Polish art in the 1990s. In his practice, Althamer uses unconventional materials, psychophysical techniques, and various forms of social interaction. His collaborations with the Nowolipie group, which supports people with multiple sclerosis, as well as projects such as Common Task with residents of Warsaw’s Bródno district and Einstein Class with troubled teenagers, demonstrate the artist’s interest in participatory art and in blurring the boundaries between art and life. For Althamer, such interaction is not only a therapeutic process but also a way to help people who are often invisible to society reintegrate socially.
In 2021, the artist created a small, landscaped garden next to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, where otherwise incompatible plants were brought together. It was intended as a space for meditation and contemplation. The installation, titled Silence, was conceived as a meeting place for different social groups, where spiritual and physical practices as well as audio‑description‑based mediations offered new ways to experience reality. The graphic works Untitled were created during the preparation of the installation and involved the local community in collective co‑creation. Together with project curator Andrey Misiano, Althamer organized a house party with artists, musicians, designers, gallerists, and friends, inviting them to record their impressions of the gathering on paper. The artist outlined the composition, while participants filled it with spontaneous gestures: some left playful inscriptions, others wrote down the Bitcoin exchange rate, and someone simply ran a hand across the sheet. The resulting multilayered drawings became a “diary” of collective experience. These works capture the process of shared action in which the boundaries of authorship dissolve and the artistic act becomes a form of communication and spontaneous togetherness.
