Grzegorz Klaman

The work was created on Granary Island located on the Motława River, in the centre of Gdańsk, where in the second half of the 1980s and the first years of the following decade, Klaman ran the open-air Wyspa Gallery. Man Carrying a Turtle is the last in a series of figurative wooden sculptures made by the artist in 1985–1989. These sculptures, sometimes embedded directly on the Island in the ruins of former granaries, were a form of intervention in the neglected and forgotten part of the city. Such interventions were characteristic of Klaman’s work in the 1980s. The historical context in which they were created influenced their brutal aesthetics, reminiscent of skinning the body. Klaman’s new-expressionist sculptures symbolically reflect the position of an individual confronting martial law, which dramatic events were felt particularly strong in Gdańsk.

• Object type:
  sculpture (wood, steel)
• Year:
  1989
• Dimensions:
  ca. 230 × 115 ×190 cm
• inv. no.:
  MNG/NOMUS/54/D
• Własność:
  Artist's deposit in the collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk (NOMUS / New Art Museum)