Two slanting steelsheets supporting each other in the manner of a roof or tent, forming a tunnel with a triangular cross-section. The floor-space encompassed by the configuration is covered in ash. On the outside, a narrow trough of brass, also triangular in cross-section and resting on a number of low supports, runs parallel to one of long sides.The length of the triangular tunnel and trough is equivalent to the physical height of the artist.

The works of Miroslav Balka-born in 1958 in Warsaw and at present a resident of that city--are market by the precise manipulation of elemental forms, measurements which are in tune with human dimensions, as well as by the delicate employment of carefully selected materials. Balka allows his materials to „ articulate" themselves insofar as he emphasizes their physical properties, by raising the reverberations of their aesthetic appeal, and also in employing them to convey meaning. The artist works exclusively with found objects in particular waste-products,i.e. objects which are loaded wih traces and as such , in themselves, contribute a narrative. The works fashioned from these things in turn seem to tell a story of their own. They give the impression of abandoned props of deeds that have already taken place, and their associative content is correspondingly high: each observer of Balka`s triangular arrangement, filled with a layer of ash.and the parallelrunning trough, commeasurate in length with that of the artist s body- a configuration reminiscent of an abandoned camp or dwelling- is free to pursue his own personal train of explanatory thought.When all is said and done however, these objects can arguable be seen to recount the ancient story of Man`s enduring endeavour to create locations and means in accordance with his dimensions and needs, to find an actual home, a permanent abode- a futile quest in the face of an existence inescapably linked with transitoriness and decay. In the light of such considerations the work can also be read as an abstacting symbol, a cipher for the most fundamental of all existential actualities, for the inevitable link between the nature of our corporal existence and dissolution and death.

In 1992 this work was exhibited at the Pakesch Art Gallery in Vienna as part of an installation bearing the suggestive title „ No-Body" The title`s emphasis of the term`s literal meaning, the absence of an actual body, also points towards the essential core of Balka`s work: the relationship it establishes with the human body, drawing attention to ist non-presence.

Eva Badura

( Translation Michael Hastic)

A highly personal expression determines the work of the Polish artist, Miroslav Balka, who has already exhibited at the ICA/Serpentine Gallery. None of his installations evr exceeds his own physical height of 190 cm, which may be one of the reasons that one is tempted to attribute them to human surroundings, calling his objects „beds", „coffins" or „tents". Because of their „ascetic" materialistic appearance (steel, brass, wood, copper) they could be associated with Minimal Art, but in truth they are opposed to this concept, already in the first place by their obvious reference to the human body. Although he works with materials he has found somewhere and which are revealing a certain history ot their own, they become sculptures in the proper sense of the word.His now untitled exhibit has earlier been entitled „no-body" and reminds in ist form od a „tent" or „roof". Inside, the floor is covered with ashes. This gives way to free associations and evokes the past and the vanity of existence. Thus the sculpture is a reductivist abstracted sign of human condition of live.

Sensivities, contemporary art from central europe