Mirosław Bałka
Miroslaw Balka (born 1958) is a contemporary Polish sculptor and video artist. He graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1985. He currently works in Otwock and Warsaw, Poland. Balka was born in Warsaw. From 1986 to 1989, Balka worked in the group Consciousnes Neue Bieriemiennost. He was the 1991 winner of the Mies van der Rohe Stipendium from the Kunstmuseum Krefeld and he is a member of Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Balka runs the Spatial Activities Studio at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In 2009, Balka installed "How It Is", the 10th Unilever Series  commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London, which opened on 13 October of that year. Work. The work of Mirosław Bałka is interdisciplinary but centres around sculpture and installation. The sculptor's work is influenced by family background: his grandfather was a gravestone cutter while his father engraved names on tombstones. The themes of many works revolve around historical traumatic events and memories, particularly the memory of World War II. Initially Bałka created figurative works; later the artist shifted towards more abstract, monumental forms. These remained related to the subject of the human existence - the body in life , death and decay, personal and collective memory. The artist frequently uses steel, cement, salt, foam rubber and felt in his sculptures. He designed the scenery for Paweł Mykietyn's composition: "The Magic Mountain" (opera, 2015) and "Herr Thaddäus" (2017).