Die Spuren

Miroslaw Balka (born 1958 in Warsaw, lives and works in Otwock, Poland) doesn't shy away from emptiness, nothingness, and death. With his existential questions, Balka counts among the internationally bestknown Polish artists of his generation. Along with sculptures and video and sound works, his oeuvre, which has been continuously growing since the 1980s, also encompasses sitespecific installation and drawing. A point of reference in many of Balka's works is the body – while it was present as a representational image in the early works, since the 1990s its treatment has been chiefly abstract. This deliberate move away from the figurative marks Miroslaw Balka's attempt to incorporate a broader wealth of association in his works. These are charged with the artist's many years of cultural experience based on his personal biography and on a reckoning with Poland's istory since National Socialism. With an introduction by Markus Heinzelmann, a text by Stefanie Kreuzer, and an excerpt of Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies.