March 2025
Wilhelm Sasnal
Portrait by Marek Gardulski
Wilhelm Sasnal reflects on the poetics of the everyday, the contrasting realities of Los Angeles and Krakow, and Sad Tropics, his latest exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery in New York.
Interview by Dan Golden
Dan Golden: You divide your time between Krakow and Los Angeles—what drew you to LA?
Wilhelm Sasnal: It was a process. After shorter and longer visits to California throughout the years, mainly in the Bay Area, we decided to move to Los Angeles, which is entirely different from our hometown, Krakow. The nature (weather), openness, and accommodating environment in LA were appealing.
DG: How has living here shaped your work?
WS: My work is inspired by everyday life; all the mundane aspects of it can be a trigger – how I imagine something could look like as a painting. I like how the two realities – Los Angeles and Krakow – are completely different. I can watch from a distance and perceive them with sort of a fresh eye.
DG: Your preferred mode of transportation in Los Angeles is a bicycle. Does cycling influence your way of seeing and experiencing the city? Does it change how you gather imagery or inspiration?
WS: Yes, it does influence how I experience the city, sometimes in uncomfortable ways (traffic, the rough, cracked asphalt), and it’s simply difficult to take notes/snapshots while cycling. Sometimes, I go back through Street View to landscapes I didn’t photograph. This limited source of unified imagery (Street View) provides space for invention in the painting. Biking and running also bring up ideas unrelated to these activities.
Tristes Tropiques, 2024, oil and pencil on canvas, 68 x 120 inches
DG: Your work often captures fleeting, everyday moments—motion sensors, overturned trash bins, a Corona truck under a perfect blue sky. What draws you to these motifs, and what makes an image worth painting?
WS: I don’t have a clear recipe for good painting. Listening to intuition works best in my case.
DG: Many of the works in Sad Tropics depict scenes in LA, but some paintings are of other locations, such as Bodega Bay. What is your experience of the California coast, and how do those landscapes resonate with you?
WS: They resonate in different ways; I love biking along the coast and in the mountains. I love the landscape. Nevertheless, I’m often inspired by the ruined side of the city or by makeshift constructions that embody the precariousness of tomorrow. These contrasting and complex aspects of LA’s reality impose an eerie tension.
Perhaps the feeling of desolation in one’s heart becomes even more striking under the sun—something you should enjoy but can’t, knowing the dark sides of the surroundings.
Un#tled (Corona Truck), 2024, oil on canvas, 32 x 44 inches
DG: A painting of someone in a pool naturally calls David Hockney to mind, just as suburban scenes can evoke Robert Bechtle. Since both artists are closely tied to depictions of California, do you see these kinds of associations as meaningful touchpoints, or are they purely incidental?
WS: It was a pure coincidence with Hockney’s pool paintings, but that’s California reality, nothing unique. I can’t say I’m particularly interested in Hockney’s or Bechtle’s views on California. Though I like the latter’s paintings.
DG: While some paintings in this exhibition reference homelessness, I wouldn’t say it’s a central theme. How do you approach addressing social issues in your work? Is homelessness also a visible issue in Poland?
WS: Homelessness exists here, and it’s evidence is extremely striking for somebody coming from Europe. After a while, it becomes an integrated part of the landscape. Nevertheless, the question of the system’s efficiency (capitalism) reappears. Perhaps that’s one of the deepest differences between social care here and in Europe. Though homelessness is present in Poland, the scale is different. Polish sociologist Zygmunt Barman said that the measure of the society is the weakest link. If it breaks, the chain is gone.
Untitled (Rita in Pool), 2024, oil on canvas, 64 x 50 inches
Berkeley Street, 2024, oil on canvas, 36 x 46 inches
Un#tled (Traffic), 2024, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
DG: You’ve said, “I know what I want to paint, but I don’t know what the painting will look like.” Could you expand on how that sense of discovery plays out in your process?
WS: I'm not sure if it’s a discovery. It could instead be fixing the errors or getting another approach/solution. I’m often dissatisfied with the result, so I clean the canvas and start again, and it happens that I do that repeatedly.
I don’t like when a painting is only the execution of a certain project from point A to point B. Painting is it’s own independent being that must be disconnected from source material at a certain point. It must be self-sufficient. I consider it a problem if it’s too easily executed. Maybe that’s my obsolete belief in labor.
DG: Your paintings sometimes remind me of stills from a movie. Do you think about your paintings in this way, as fragments of a larger narrative, perhaps?
WS: No, I want them to be independent. However, a painting changes its context once placed next to other works. Then, it acquires a different meaning.
Un#tled (Green Landscape with Electric Poles), 2024, oil on canvas, 26 x 32 inches
Untitled (Couple in Surf), 2024, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
Un#tled (Bodega Bay 2), 2024, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
DG: Your work is deeply intuitive, yet you also engage with historical and social themes. How do you create structure for yourself when your source material is often fleeting moments or abstract observations?
WS: I collect images and consider the ones I find meaningful—but not in an obvious way—as inspiration for painting. These images come from the internet, prints, or real life, often as snapshots taken with my phone.
DG: I understand that music is important to you. Does it inform or inspire your approach to painting or film?
WS: No, it doesn’t directly inspire me, though music (or audiobooks) are always playing in the background. When I was young (and naive), I wanted to paint like some band played (Shellac, Jesus Lizard, Sonic Youth). Anyway, music was always the most important thing for me. Through music, I became interested in art.
“Painting is its own independent being—it must detach from its source material at some point and stand on its own.”
Installation View, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sad Tropics, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, January 22—March 6, 2025
DG: Painting can be solitary, while filmmaking involves collaboration, structure, and long production timelines. How do you navigate working between these two very different mediums? Do you find switching between them fluid, or is it a challenge?
WS: I work with my wife Anka, who knows the actors personally, how to cast, and how to interpret the characters. She co-directed the film. Working with the same crew from our previous films makes it less complicated. They understand our needs. Anka manages the structure and collaboration for the most part.
DG: Your latest feature film, The Assistant, is premiering at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. What drew you to Robert Walser’s novel, and how did you approach adapting it?
WS: From the books first pages, I felt that it’s the perfect novel to be filmed. I loved the title character, Joseph Marti—the alter ego of the writer. He was inconsistent, obedient yet arrogant. I was laughing out loud while reading the novel, to Anka’s confusion who read it before and she didn’t find it funny. I felt there was a space for music, scenes not strictly subordinated to storytelling, and a more open structure, nevertheless with emotions and a clear plot.
Of course, it’s completely different from painting practice, like Krakow vs LA, but I need them both.
Installation View, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sad Tropics, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, January 22—March 6, 2025
DG: Travel also seems central to your practice—not just physically moving between Krakow and LA but also how you approach places as an observer, neither fully as a local nor an outsider. Do you consider yourself a kind of traveler in your work?
WS: I like that parallel very much. I’m a traveller in my life, yet with a certain need to settle down at my age! Anyway, it perfectly describes the edge I live on, to be stimulated. Finding my identity by belonging to a bigger group (and I find national identity to be the worst) would make me sick. Of course, I’m aware that’s a privilege to be an outsider on my own terms, or a foreigner in my motherland, but it brings a broader perspective and prevents one from chasing one’s tail.
DG: The exhibition title, Sad Tropics, references Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, a book about anthropology, colonialism, and encountering the unfamiliar. What does this title mean to you in the context of the show?
WS: Paintings come from the tropics of Los Angeles. Once, I saw a naked person sleeping in broad daylight on the street—it struck me. It reminded me of a photograph from Tristes Tropiques of a woman and child sleeping naked on the bare ground.
Installation View, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sad Tropics, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, January 22—March 6, 2025
DG: What are you watching or listening to right now that you’d recommend?
WS: I listened to Liz Harris’s (Grouper) first recordings today and plan to listen to the more recent ones tomorrow. There is Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and his recordings of that period – I like coming back to them.
DG: What do you find inspiring right now, and what are you up to?
WS: I’m the cameraman for Anka’s new film and find her script exciting. Her pace differs from mine; she’s very slow in her work, which may take another year or two.
I enjoy walking in my neighborhood with a notebook, making sketches, and listening to music.
Wilhelm Sasnal
Sad Tropics
Anton Kern Gallery
New York
January 22—March 6, 2025
Wilhelm Sasnal is a Polish painter, illustrator, and filmmaker whose work spans oil paintings, drawings, photographs, and films. Drawing inspiration from mass media, pop culture, and personal experiences, his art explores themes of historical memory, cultural identity, and the complexities of contemporary life. Over the past two decades, he has become one of Europe’s most prominent contemporary artists, with solo exhibitions worldwide. His work is held in major public collections, including Tate, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Dan Golden is a Los Angeles-based artist, designer, and creative director, as well as the founder of Curator.