signed and dated 1999 verso- acrylics on canvas 69.5 x 69.5 cm
Provenance and literature
Provenance: Gijs van Tuyl, Breda (former director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam)
About the artist
Wilhelm Tomasz Sasnal (Tarnów, Poland, 1972) is a prominent contemporary painter and video artist.
His work is characterized by a perspective that focuses on both the small and the large: Sasnal paints everything from communist propaganda posters to photos of pop stars or rolls of tape. His work reflects an inquisitive gaze toward the changes that have taken place since the fall of communism. He depicts his subjects as clinically as possible and can be called a photorealist. However, his work reveals an interest that goes beyond photorealism: Sasnal employs techniques comparable to a photographer’s editing, not with the aim of painting the photographic medium with its perfections and imperfections, but to analyze the subjects he approaches as sharply as possible. Reproducing the photograph perfectly is not the goal, but rather the means to make a statement about the visual culture that changed dramatically in Poland after the country underwent greater Western influences. In 2006, he won the Vincent van Gogh Biennial Award for Contemporary Art in Europe.