Paweł Althamer: Art Basel Parcours

Three reclining, full-scale figures cast in aluminum comprise Paweł Althamer’s work Astronauts (2023). Clad in the garb of astronauts - helmets, goggles, padded suits and boots - the sculpture’s protagonists continue the artist’s frequent engagement with the concept of outer space as a venue for alternate histories and ever-expanding narratives that stretch beyond those bound by established terrestrial or societal frameworks. This point of reference is made literal here: The castings’ texture resembles the Moon’s surface, its rough undulations revealing embedded sculptural maquettes upon closer inspection.These trappings are in fact makeshift, fashioned from items collected at a flea market in Althamer’s native Warsaw frequented by the city’s inhabitants seeking refuge from Ukraine. Viewed through this lens, the artist’s sculpted forms take on the appearance of soldiers, alluding to now-omnipresent military imagery. Counterbalancing this contemporary parallel, the trio’s poses find a centuries-old source: Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1567 The Land of Cockaigne. In this oil-on-panel composition, a clerk, a peasant and a soldier are pictured in various states of satiation, splayed out in rest at a tree’s base. Althamer adapts Bruegel’s scene here, extracting its unique, social stratification-bridging depiction, spanning walks of life by way of shared pleasures and vices.