MIROSLAW BALKA

Mirosław Bałka

(Born 1958, works in Warsaw)
Play-pit, 2000
Diabase, plastic
206 x 150 x 60 cm
With support from Broby Granit AB

Mirosław Bałka’s oeuvre is characterized by contrasts. He uses deeply personal references such as his body, his upbringing, and his own belongings—as well as collective experiences from the Holocaust, Polish history, or Catholic ceremonies. The proportions in Play-pit’s coffin-like form uses the artist’s own body as a starting point. The balls filling the coffin tempt us to step down into the work. The coffin and the yellow and blue balls stand in stark contrast to each other. Together they play on the sombre and the playful, on permanence and transience. Bałka was commissioned to design the memorial for the victims of the M/S Estonia Disaster in the Baltic Sea in 1994. The Estonia Monument was inaugurated in 1997 and stands in the cemetery Galärvarvskyrkogården on Djurgården in Stockholm.