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The paintings of Wilhelm Sasnal chronicle the complex experience of life today. Mixing art historical references with images taken from the internet, their subject matter knows no limits: from icons of popular culture such as Roy Orbison to much admired paintings of the past such as Georges Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières (1884); from the lonesome cowboys in a Steven Spielberg film to the shocking photographs of Mexican photographer, Enrique Metinides.
Using found images as starting points for most of his paintings, Wilhelm Sasnal’s stylistic vocabulary is a broad as his subject matter. It ranges from early pop-inspired works and comic-style black-and-white paintings reflecting on the troubled history of his native Poland to painterly representations of current events.
The limited edition print Damned Youth, 2011 was produced by Sasnal exclusively for the Whitechapel Gallery and the title is a word play on the fleetingness of youth, also alluding to the experience of looking back on twenty years of working as a painter.
Wilhelm Sasnal was born 1972 in Tarnów, Poland and he currently lives and works in Krakow, Poland.He is represented by Hauser & Wirth.
Sasnal has exhibited widely in Europe and America, including solo shows at the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21, Düsseldorf, Germany; Camden Arts Centre, London; Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland and Sadie Coles London as well as group shows at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Saatchi Gallery; Centre Georges Pompidou; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
