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Visual Arts
Wilhelm Sasnal (above)
Piotr Uklański (top right)
Anda Rottenberg (above)
When Sasnal founded the Ładnie (Nice) group in 1996 with his friends, they made one of the most radical turns in Polish art of the 1990s. Ładnie addressed problems across the spectrum of economic, cultural and social changes, often illustrating them with jokingly realistic paintings. Many of Sasnal’s works are close to critical art, such as the ‘Maus’ series inspired by the comics of Art Spiegelman. With his transparent visual language, humorous content and unusual painterly craft, Sasnal rapidly became the best selling Polish painter, with his works shown at the world’s leading galleries, like Anton Kern in New York and Whitechapel in London. In addition to paintings, he makes films with his wife Anna •
The artistic embodiment of the American dream, Piotr Uklański lives and works in New York City, while working with the Galeria Foksal Foundation in Warsaw and Gagosian Gallery. Uklański slips easily between such disparate themes as contemporary philosophy and the pop-culture aesthetic of kitsch. In addition to installations, photographs and photomontage, Uklański directed a feature film in the Western convention whose eccentricity fully reflects the nature of the artist’s work •
Curator and author of books popularizing contemporary art. Anda Rottenberg’s outlook as a curator has often generated social criticism, sparking changes in the Polish public discourse and mirroring the maladies of Polish culture. One of Rottenberg’s greatest achievements as a curator was 2011’s Side by Side. PolandGermany. 1000 Years of Art and History at the Martin-GropiusBau in Berlin •