Miroslaw Balka
"Miroslaw Balka" by Ann Danilevich, Winter 2006, p. 76
Familiar imagery becomes abstract in Miroslaw Balka’s video works. His recent exhibition, “Lichtzwang,” consists of seven video-based installations executed over the past six years. Extreme close-ups and deliberately unfocused footage temporarily conceal the identity of his subjects, which tend to be mundane—a seaside souvenir, a pile of sand transported on a truck, a wall. However, unlike artists who use dull subject matter entirely for its own sake, Balka chooses imagery that is charged with symbolic meaning. In addition, his work is rooted in documentation, which, as the catalogue incisively states, “is about bearing witness, engaging, becoming entangled.”
In T.turn (2004), blurred, slow-motion blackand- white footage from a hand-held camera is projected onto a bed of salt and shallow steel boxes on the floor. The imagery twists slowly up and around, revealing glimpses of figures in a meadow, forest and sky. The cinematography is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, but this is not a film about a group visit to the woods; T.turn was filmed in Treblinka, a former Nazi extermination camp in Poland. Although not much remains of the camp, the place itself bears the memory of the atrocities that took place there. Balka’s work often deals with themes of death, loss, memory and the passage of time. The Holocaust bears particular significance for the Poland-born artist.
In BlueGasEyes (2004), gas burners are projected onto more shallow steel boxes on the floor filled with table salt. Salt, here, becomes the equivalent of dried tears. There is a sinister quality to the blue rings of burning gas; they allude to gas massacres perpetrated by the blue-eyed. In the background, the viewer is able to hear the sound of steadily seeping gas and the crackle of a fire.
The Wall (2006) consists of a filmed image of a white wall projected onto a constructed gallery wall. It seems like nothing at first. The camera makes an unsystematic survey, moving up, down and to the sides to reveal nicks, bumps and other particularities of the wall. As the viewer becomes absorbed, the work acquires a meditative quality. Seen in the context of the exhibition, however, it is not without an element of unease; the state of “facing the wall” brings to mind the trapped gaze of a prisoner.
One glance is not enough to grasp the gravity of Balka’s work; it demands contemplation. The artwork titles provide insight into the disguised symbolism of the work. By making common objects and occurrences stand-ins for more profound ideas, Balka challenges viewers to think carefully about what they are seeing, both in his work and in their own surroundings.
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