Paweł Althamer: I (am)

The title of Althamer’s exhibition I (am) epitomises the core questions of his art: Who am I? Who are we together? Collaboration is a key component of Althamer’s artistic practice. He regularly involves his family, neighbours, museum visitors, as well as disadvantaged citizens in the creation of his works. These collaborations result in sculptures—totems as Althamer calls them—that are traces of this process. The important thing for Althamer is not the end-result but sharing the creative game with the audience.

The exhibition I (am) introduces museumgoers to Althamer’s extensive array of self-portraits, sculptures, installations, performance documentations as well as miniature worlds. The show includes a slide, originally created in collaboration with children, which child visitors can use.

Althamer will also create a new work for HAM in which he developes his method of creative play with open outcome further. One of the two large second-floor galleries will be converted into a white space where Althamer invites the audience to enter silently, dressed in white, and without their mobile phones. Althamer has likened his new work to the sauna and its purifying effect on mind and body. The white space is designed to purify the senses and the mind of the ever-present flood of external stimuli.