Wilhelm Sasnal

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Wilhelm Sasnal at Whitechapel Gallery, London, October 14, 2011 - January 1, 2012

Text by Ulrich Wilmes

Interview by Achim Borchardt-Hume

Mixing art historical references with images taken from the internet, the paintings of Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal (born 1972) borrow liberally from the image glut around us, appropriating anything from icons of popular culture such as Roy Orbison to paintings of the past such as Georges Seurat's "Bathers at Asnières"--from the lonesome cowboys in a Steven Spielberg film to the photographs of Enrique Metinides. In an era flooded by photographic images, Sasnal's work attests to the continuous spellbinding power of painting to cohere and recode visual data. This volume, published for a major show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, surveys Sasnal's paintings of the past ten years. It opens with recent works referencing world events and the artist's extensive travels before returning to Pop-inspired work from the 1990s and reflections on the troubled history of his native Poland.