Miroslaw Balka - Lichtzwang Lichtzwang

Established for some time now as the one of the best-known Polish artists and with shows of his sculptural work gracing the Tate Modern exposing him to a wider international audience, Miroslaw Balka is to be the focus of an intimate exhibition at the K21 in D?sseldorf devoted to seven of his video works dating from 2001 to the present.\nIt is apparent-brought to the fore in Julian Heynen's incisive analyses of the individual works with great empathy-that Balka's works target an ?unbearable dichotomy?. For Balka, the Loop is ?a means to draw the viewer into a singular zone somewhere between seeing and thinking. The viewer is shown simple video recordings of fleeting events and situations. In that sense the prevailing tone is one of documentary sobriety.? Yet it is also true that ?however closely the works cling to the tangible surface of things and themes, they render themselves proportionately distant and alien. In this half-way house there is not stopping, no rest, no certainty, only the irresistible urge to look again and perhaps to glimpse in another patch of light a different detail of those things that are still not understood.?