Artist studio: Miroslaw Balka takes us on a tour

Balka has been visiting Treblinka, the notorious Nazi death camp, for more than a decade. He says that until the second world war, most of the population was Jewish, and they all ended up at the camp Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Having seen all but one of the Tate's previous 10 Unilever projects – everything but Anish Kapoor's Marsyas – Balka says that each commission makes it feel harder for the next artist. But he won't divulge what he's going to do Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

A road sign Balka found near his studio in Otwock, a spa town close to Warsaw, where he grew up Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Balka's studio, in the little house where he spent much of his childhood, was damaged by a fire in the early 1990s. Afterwards, Balka exhibited the scorched and blackened drawings that survived Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Balka talks about a local Jewish cemetery, an abandoned place with bones poking out of the sandy soil. A visiting American curator picked one up to take home as a souvenir, before Bałka stopped her Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

The floor of Balka's studio is crammed with piles of floorboards and dismantled staircases, abandoned projects, and a homemade version of a Rietveld modernist chair Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

A portrait of Balka's son, dressed in a Superboy costume Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Some of Balka's sculptures incorporate sweat and urine; others have heating elements inserted, so that they are the temperature of the human body when exhibited Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Even though Balka has been showing internationally since 1990, he says his father, who works as a headstone engraver in a studio nearby, doesn't think much of his son's work Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Balka broaches the subject of the Holocaust in his work, but insists it is not all about that. 'It is about being,' he says Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

'Much of what I do is about falling down, and about gravity,' Balka says Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

In the garden, Balka stands among the outcuts and debris left behind from his sculptures Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Balka stopped making figurative work in 1989, wanting to avoid illustration Photograph: David Levene/David Levene

Adrian Searle says: 'A sense of the absurd runs through [Balka's] art, making it poignant rather than pompous Photograph: David Levene/David Levene