Miroslaw Balka came to the attention of the art world in 1985 at the end-of-year show of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, when he invited teachers and guests to an abandoned farmstead in the village of Zukow. After travelling there by bus and finishing the journey on foot, the public was introduced by two young boys dressed in ceremonial clothes to a viewing of Remembrance of the First Holy Communion, a statue of an adolescent on a low platform with his hand resting on a small table on which there was a photo of the artist himself taken on the day of his first communion. The performance was completed by the arrival of Balka – with his face painted white – on a child’s bicycle. This work, exhibited in 1995 at the Rites of Passage: Art for the End of Century show at the Tate Gallery in London, was a memorable debut in that it contains the central themes the artist would subsequently go on to develop – the reworking of personal memories, the relationship with the body, and an interest in the relations between the work and the space that contains it.
Over the years Balka’s artistic syntax has become increasingly abstract; the human figure has disappeared, giving way to traces that relate its absence; everyday objects – the bed, the lamp, the wardrobe – are resonant with symbolic meanings. The materials set alongside them have assumed a more and more central role, and the core themes a more evocative form, with personal experience being interwoven with reflection on collective historical memory.
The artist moved away from a spectacular dimension and began transforming ordinary substances like salt, ash or soap into symbols of human existence. A piece of old linoleum contains traces of the lives of those who have walked over it, the sharp odour of soap evokes memories of school baths but also tragically recalls the production of soap in the concentration camps. The artist always chooses materials that have a powerful personal significance for him; he then assembles them with a minimalist syntax but in a version that has a markedly subjective dimension. The size of the works is in fact established in relation to his body measurements – height, weight, shoe size – as underlined by the titles. In his most recent works, human presence is suggested through subtle references to the body, for instance orifices and handles. The spectator has the emotional and mental space to complete the suggestions generated by these traces with his or her own personal memories.
Since the beginning of the 90s Balka has exhibited in major international shows such as Metropolis in Berlin in 1991 and Documenta IX in 1992. The following year he represented Poland at the Venice Biennale and in 1995 he showed at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.