Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, in fact, different artists—and the cultural experiences which have formed his life and work.
Sasnal, born in 1972 in Tarnów, Poland, has made one of the vital vital contributions to portray within the twenty first century. He works with photographic imagery, drawn from an array of sources together with newspapers, movie, music movies, album covers, graphic novels, historic artwork and, crucially, his personal pictures, together with these taken on his smartphone, of his household.
He additionally makes movies, each in collaboration along with his spouse Anka and on his personal. The result’s a physique of labor that engages profoundly with modern life and the saturation of pictures that accompanies it. He discusses his array of supply pictures and the method of selecting and utilizing them, and the way he has balanced the private and non-private throughout his profession. He talks about risk-taking and permitting the paint to dictate the trail of an image.
He displays on how music was the spur for his discovery of artwork, and the way it continues to be central to his work as we speak. He talks about artists as various as Degas, Seurat, Sigmar Polke and Wolfgang Tillmans. And he solutions our standard questions, together with the final word: “What’s artwork for?”
• Wilhelm Sasnal, Sadie Coles HQ, Kingly St, London, till 16 March; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 30 March-1 September
• Wilhelm’s movie The Assistant might be screened later in 2024.
