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Wilhelm Sasnal: Sad Tropics

Past exhibition
January 22 - March 6, 2025
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Press
Overview
Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Eric Call Home), 2024 Oil on canvas 64 x 50 inches 162.6 x 127 cm
Wilhelm Sasnal
Untitled (Eric Call Home), 2024
Oil on canvas
64 x 50 inches
162.6 x 127 cm

In his exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery, Polish artist and filmmaker Wilhelm Sasnal presents a body of paintings made during his current stay in Los Angeles. As a keen observer of historical contexts, the works reflect a rapidly changing political and social landscape. His work has most recently been presented in a one-person exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His new feature film, "The Assistant," will premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in February 2025. 

 

A few years ago, Sasnal began to divide his time between his hometown Krakow and Los Angeles. This annual cycle has provided him with unique insights into the sprawling California metropolis. Neither a tourist nor a local, his gaze remains sensitive to the smallest changes and differences in his surroundings. Constantly out on the asphalt on his preferred means of transport, the bicycle, Sasnal experiences the ordinary as if seen for the first time and from an outsider’s perspective.  

 

The direct experience of seeing the large numbers of unhoused persons lying on the ground during a massive summer heatwave inspired a monumental painting entitled "Smutek Tropikow" or “Sad Tropics.” Named after Claude Lévi-Strauss' anthropological travelogue from 1955, “Triste Tropique,” it comments on the contradictory nature of contemporary urban life in a megacity like Los Angeles. The stark black-and-white painting of a mobile traffic sign, augmented with oilstick rubbings made on the asphalt outside the artist's studio, stands as the programmatic work for this exhibition, a work that ties all individual images into one large narrative. 

 

Empty cardboard boxes from a bedding store crudely put together as a temporary shelter; a Corona delivery truck underneath the California blue sky; a couple embracing in the surf of the Pacific Ocean; an anonymous suburban street with overturned garbage bins; the artist’s daughter in a swimming pool looking at her phone while surrounded by an idyllic desert sunset; endless highway traffic and the recurring theme of asphalt: these are all scenes that can easily be observed and interpreted. However, what sets these motifs apart from mere observation is the way Sasnal renders them. "I know what I want to paint, but I don't know what the painting will look like," the artist remarked. Fast photographic cropping as compositional device; thin and fluid brushstrokes, contrasted with creamy highlights of thick paint; the use of artificial over local colors; the improvisational handling of light reflections; all held together by a pensive and cool atmosphere, express the autonomy of Sasnal's paintings. The dynamic intertwining of social concern and painterly autonomy is what makes Sasnal the most unique realist painter of our era.

List of Works
Installation Views
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 10
  • Sansal Floor 02 Install 12
  • Sansal Floor 02 Install 02
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 02 Scale
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 04
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 03 Scale
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 11 Scale
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 12
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 15
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 05
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 14
  • Sansal Floor 01 Install 08
Works
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Eric Call Home), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Eric Call Home), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Wall with Cardboard Boxes), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Wall with Cardboard Boxes), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Tristes Tropiques, 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Tristes Tropiques, 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (All American Asphalt), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (All American Asphalt), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Cacti), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Cacti), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Rita in Pool), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Rita in Pool), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Berkeley Street, 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Berkeley Street, 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (The Kiss), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (The Kiss), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Corona Truck), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Corona Truck), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Green Landscape with Electric Poles), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Green Landscape with Electric Poles), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Traffic), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Traffic), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Two Policemen in Front of Fruit Still Life), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Two Policemen in Front of Fruit Still Life), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Couple in Surf), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Couple in Surf), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Smokey the Bear), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Smokey the Bear), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Fruit Still Life 1), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Fruit Still Life 1), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Bodega Bay 1), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Bodega Bay 1), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled (Bodega Bay 2), 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled (Bodega Bay 2), 2024
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Untitled, 2024
    Wilhelm Sasnal
    Untitled, 2024
Press
  • Wilhelm Sasnal

    Dan Golden, Curator Guide, March 4, 2025
  • Wilhelm Sasnal Explores the Margins of Los Angeles

    Edward Waisnis, Whitehot Magazine, March 3, 2025
  • Wilhelm Sasnal: Sad Tropics

    Przekrój, January 29, 2025
  • Picture Mechanics

    Reilly Davidson, Family Style, January 23, 2025
  • Paradise on the Brink: Wilhelm Sasnal's "Sad Tropics" @ Anton Kern Gallery, NYC

    Evan Pricco, Juxtapoz Magazine, January 23, 2025

Related artist

  • Wilhelm Sasnal

    Wilhelm Sasnal

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