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Self-Portrait (Clothing)
Paweł Althamer
textiles, artist's personal belongings packed in plastic-foil
185 × 73 × 3.5 cm
1994
Acquisition 2000
Inv. No. 0079
A self-portrait as a ″negative cast″ of existence. The ″soul″ reveals itself. Traces and shells of a real life are sealed up in plastic. One thinks involuntarily of the material remains of deceased persons in a police exhibit room. In fact, Althamer has indeed staged a ″little death″ by taking everything he wore on his body on one day in the year 1994, removing it from life and storing it.
Since the I.D., keys and yearly season ticket had to be replaced, the uncanny artwork led to a massive restriction on the artist’s daily life. Thus it had repercussions, in the sense of Althamer’s poetics of magic transformations, in real life.
The assemblage of personal things (a plastic watch, ″Tschic-Tchac″ brand underpants etc.) from a (then) 27-year-old Polish artist who also worked as a puppet maker, film designer, graphic artist and factory worker is, naturally, also a documentary storage device for a socio-historical moment. However, sociological aspects are secondary for Althamer: ″I want to incite people until they are confused and lose their control.″
Wolfgang Kos, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingExhibitions
Ich - Neue Formen des Selbstportraits, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt a. Main, 2016
Reflecting Fashion. Kunst und Mode seit der Moderne, MUMOK, Vienna, 2012
Nude men from 1800 to the present day, Leopold Museum, Vienna, 2012
Sehnsucht nach dem Abbild. Das Porträt im Wandel der Zeit, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems, 2009
Going Native: Visions from the End, New Museum, New York, 2008
Nach Rokytník. The collection of EVN, MUMOK, Vienna, 2005
Pawel & Vincent, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2004
Volksgarten. Die Politik der Zugehörigkeit, Landesmuseum Joanneum - Kunsthaus, Graz
Publications
Nackte Männer. Von 1800 bis Heute, Munich 2012, p. 318
Reflecting Fashion. Kunst und Mode seit der Moderne [Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 15 June – 23 September 2012], , p. 110
After Nature, July 17 – September 21, 2008, New York City 2008
Volksgarten. Die Politik der Zugehörigkeit: Koproduktion von Kunsthaus Graz und steirischer herbst, Cologne 2007, p. 110
evn sammlung 95–05, Cologne 2005, p. 42–45
evn sammlung. Ankäufe 2000–2002, Maria Enzersdorf 2002, p. 10
Context
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from Paweł Althamer
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from 1994
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self-portraits