Brilliant Ideas Episode #47: Wilhelm Sasnal
Artist reorganizing events and memories
We record experiences in our lives in various ways such as texts, pictures, and videos to remember them better. Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal reorganizes the existing images and memories into new stories in his own way. Acting as a bridge that connects the present and the past, Sasnal sometimes observes the situation in distance, and in other times mingles himself into the subject in a more personal manner, in order to suggest a new point of view for interpreting factual events.
He focuses on the subjective and specific description, believing that though an image itself may not matter, it is given a precise meaning and value through painting that newly represents it. Brilliant Ideas Episode #47 presented by Bloomberg and Hyundai Motor, features Wilhelm Sasnal, who presents records of the present and the past demonstrated by painting and film.
Watch Brilliant Ideas Episode #47: Wilhelm Sasnal
GO >Painting that shows things as they are
From age to age, painting has been used as a medium for recording historic facts and events. Since the 19th century, however, painting’s role of capturing scenes realistically has been replaced by photography. Instead, painting started to diversify beyond merely bringing an image onto the canvas. Sasnal has pondered about what kind of paintings would be still valid and valuable since he started to learn painting. While creating a work, the artist ceaselessly questions what relationship the work has with the surrounding environment and life, and thinks carefully about how he can connect the past and the present through the work. That is why he avoids the painting considered conventional such as drawing plaster casts or still-life paintings and instead presents artworks based on pop culture. Sasnal brings daily subjects onto the canvas and films, allowing us to think again about the role of an image. Tossing a question through a painting itself or directly reflecting images on a painting, he naturally lets viewers read various stories from a piece of painting.
Meanwhile, Sasnal sees images as quite fluid. He does his best to avoid certain rules from setting in during the creative process because he believes only when there are no rules can the abstract look like the factual and vice versa. What Sasnal tries to convey through the artworks is not something grandiose such as the hidden “truth” of images and events, but merely the way they are. Therefore, his paintings are reformed as artworks with messages each viewer can interpret differently, and with even more stories than the artist originally intended.
Story of the present told by the past
The subjects of Sasnal’s works are mostly borrowed from historical facts or ideas or images from the artist’s surroundings. Using various materials including canvases, paints, and films, he weaves his personal memories with past events and facts in general and art history in his original way. <Bathers at Asnières>(2010) is inspired by a 1884 painting by Georges Seurat with the same name. Sasnal sensed melancholy from the scene of a beautiful day in Seurat’s painting. He then added his memories of the river in his hometown, his Grandmother’s stories about the summer right before the Second World War, and an image of people resting by the river to depict it on the canvas. In this way, the artist used Seurat’s painting as a base image to tell an entirely different story.
Sasnal uses minimum colors in his paintings. He says he only uses colors appropriate for emphasizing and highlighting, that is, only when needed, and not for making the paintings glamorous. The grey color often seen in his works is not just to demonstrate a simple monochrome screen. As seen from <Atlas>(2014), Sasnal uses colors only for stressing the “fact” without emotional elements. In other words, he uses grey not for aesthetics but for conveying facts. Meanwhile, the artist’s scene of green and rough strokes is romantic as it is but also represents a foreign sight as if contaminated with chemicals. Sasnal says a painting is a screen that reflects the world and the painting itself at the same time, and therefore the world he lives is a painting and an artwork as itself. He feels extreme pressure and stress when creating a work, so to him, painting is a painful act he should endure.
Even when making a piece of work does not take much time, countless stories and thoughts are weaved together in one’s mind for that creative process. Therefore, viewing a piece of Sasnal’s painting means the same as reading a comic book of 100 pages. Sasnal asserts that, as images continue to vary even while a work is made, creating his works is an ever-continuing mental process. One could wonder how the future would remember the past he reorganized and the records he has been leaving. ■with ARTINPOST
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Wilhelm Sasnal <Untitled (Last Temptation)> 2014
diptych, oil on canvas. each: 40 x 50 x 2.5 cm / 15 ¾ x 19 ⅝ x 1 in. Installation view, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sadie Coles HQ, London, 14 January - 21 February 2015. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Foz Do Iguaçu Hotel> 2014
oil on canvas. 160 x 200 x 2.5 cm / 63 x 78 ¾ x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Untitled (after Stubbs)> 2014
oil on canvas. 40 x 50 x 2.5 cm / 15 ¾ x 19 ⅝ x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<War Painting (after Cezanne)> 2014
oil on canvas. 35.5 x 49 x 4 cm / 14 x 19 ¼ x 1 ½ in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Swastika> 2014
oil on canvas. 50 x 40.5 x 2.5 cm / 19 ⅝ x 16 x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Christopher Columbus> 2014
oil on canvas. 160 x 120 x 2.5 cm / 63 x 47 ¼ x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Atlas> 2014
oil on canvas. 40 x 50 x 2.5 cm / 15 ¾ x 19 ⅝ x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Murzynek Bambo> 2014
oil on canvas. 220 x 160 x 2.5 cm / 86 ½ x 63 x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Cross-section, room> 2014
oil on canvas. 220 x 180 x 2.5 cm / 86 ½ x 70 ⅞ x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Cross section, plant> 2014
oil on canvas. 140 x 160 x 2.5 cm / 55 x 63 x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Witek> 2009
oil on canvas. 220 x 180 x 2.5 cm / 86 ½ x 70 ¼ x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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<Grass> 2013
oil on canvas. 180 x 220 x 2.5 cm / 70 ¾ x 86 ½ x 1 in. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
Profile
Wilhelm Sasnal works with inspiration from daily life and mass media. His images which explore the reality in his own ways are expressive and freewheeling. In addition, they leave a strong impression. Ironically, his borderless and diverse painting methods and filming techniques are based on traditional ways of oil painting. Sasnal also focuses on diverse effects by crossing over and blending between historic sense and private memories.
Born in 1972, Poland, Wilhelm Sasnal studied architecture at the Cracow Polytechnic, Poland and painting at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, Poland. Working as a co-founder and member of the Ładnie art group, he experienced many exhibitions since his school days. He has had solo exhibitions at various places around the world including; Hauser & Wirth, London, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, Sadie Coles, London, Qiao Space 2555, Shanghai, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Rat Hole Gallery, Tokyo.
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