“Christian Jankowski is an infiltrator: he imposes himself into various societal structures and
systems (particularly media), making cunning artworks that, in turn infiltrate the artworld. A
deceptive appropriator, Jankowski’s art doesn’t really look like art. Although he is aptly
described as a conceptual artist, his reliance on culturally based subjects and motifs also link
him with Pop Art and later Pop-inspired tendencies.”
Jankowski’s work is a performance which engages often unsuspecting
collaborators to innocently collude with him, making them ‘co-authors’ of the
final result which is often a surprise, even to the artist himself. The collaborative
nature of Jankowski’s practice is paramount, as each participant unwittingly
contributes his or her own texture, culminating in a layered psychological journey
that one suspects is as curious to the artist as to the viewer.
In one thematic body of work, Jankowski explores the unique relationship
between the artist, the gallery as “institution” and the viewer, which he refers to
as a “magic circle”. Presented as a trilogy of video pieces comprising Flock,
Director Poodle, and My Life As A Dove, each piece relies on magic to transform
various human participants into non-human entities. In Flock, 2002, a 12.5 minute
DVD, he invites master magician Paul Kiev, consultant to David Copperfield, to
turn 12 gallery visitors into sheep. In pairs, volunteers are turned into sheep as
they enter the private view of a group exhibition, the theme of which centred on
magic-related art. After pre-viewing the exhibition they are transformed back
into human form. My Life As A Dove, 1996 centres on the artist’s literal
transformation into a dove by magician Wim Brando. For the duration of his
three-week exhibition in Antwerp, Jankowski spends his life in a cage as a white
dove, completely superseded by his avian alter ego. In Director Poodle Jankowski
convinces the then- director of the Kunstverien Hamburg, Stephan Schmidt-
Wullfen to subject himself to Jankowski’s orchestrations of wizardry, allowing the
curator to choose the kind of animal he would like to become. The result was
his miraculous transformation into a boisterous white poodle.
The Hunt, 1992, a performance video piece is one of the artists earliest works.
For one week the artist visits supermarkets and rather than select his goods as
customary, he‘ hunts down’ his groceries, shooting each item with a children’s
bow and arrow, accompanied by a friend with a video camera. He then queues
and pays for his ‘skewered’ goods in the orthodox manner, thereby subverting
the earlier regression to the ‘manly technique of ‘natural’ self-supply”. This final
gesture humorously suggests that ‘natural ways’ and capitalist circulation are not
necessarily mutually exclusive. Jankowski’s signature use of formats more
commonly associated with mass media is evident in the low-tech ‘teleshopping’
appearance of The Hunt in that one could imagine the video being promoted on
QVC as a bizarre new way to shop. Comic incongruities and magical
transformations are recursive motifs in Jankowski’s art.
Usage of media formats is evident too in the ‘culture documentary’ style of one
of his more collaborative works, Matrix Effect, 2000 whereby Jankowski pays
homage to preceding fellow artists. Commissioned by Wadsworth Atheneum to
make a new work, he found himself engaged by the history of the Wadsworth
Atheneum itself and in particular, its Matrix program and the 141 contributing
artists who exhibited during the curatorial reign of Andrea Miller-Keller from
1975-1998. Artists included, among others: Sol LeWitt, (1975), John Baldessari
(1977), Christo & Jean Claude (1978), and Janine Antoni. Jankowski contacted
each artist with a list of questions pertaining specifically to their own Matrix
exhibitions, to which they responded in writing or by phone. A script was
devised based on these interviews and then filmed. Rather than casting the
artists as themselves, Jankowski enlisted untrained children between the ages of
seven and ten in the roles of the artists. Hence, The Matrix Effect – ‘a
supernatural transformation whereby commitment to new ideas stimulates a radical
age reversal.’ Comical, sometimes-ironic changes occur as the children speak the
parts of the adult artists. As the children were not given the script or rehearsed
beforehand, the dialogue becomes a form of ‘Chinese Whispers’. While
earnestly attempting to repeat complicated lines, the word “critics” becomes
“critters” and “historical” morphs into “hysterical” in the mouths of the children.
His most recent work Bravo Jankowski! made specifically for this exhibition, again
centres on the relationship between gallery, audience and artist. Wanting to
make a work unique to Lisson Gallery, Jankowski seized upon an idea inspired by
the serendipitous receipt of a gift. A friend, amused by the name coincidence,
sent the artist a vinyl LP by Horst Jankowski entitled Bravo Jankowski! found on
Ebay. Provided with this stimulus, Jankowski asked gallery staff to participate in a
video set to the music on the LP. Each staff member was requested to speak,
on camera, about the artist’s work. Against the backdrop of the music, the work
plays with the duality of the “2 Jankowski’s” whereby one could interpret the
staff critiques as either relevant to the exhibition or to the music itself. The
results are equally enlightening and hilarious, recalling the highly stylised
sponsored television advertisements from the 50’s and 60’s.
Jankowski’s work is at once sympathetic, ingenuous and human, yet subversive
and sharply observed. Unafraid of exposing himself within the work he takes an
acute, humorous and thoughtful look at the human condition.
While he has been widely exhibited in Germany and the US, this will be his first
solo exhibition in the UK.
Christian Jankowski was born in 1968 in Göttingen Germany and lives and works
in Berlin and New York. Selected one person exhibitions include: Maccarone Inc.,
New York, 2002; Swiss Institute, New York, 2001; ArtPace, San Antonio, Texas
2001; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 2000; Goethe Institut, Paris,
1999; and Klosterfelde, Berlin in 1996,1998 and again in 2002; MACRO, Rome,
2003. Group exhibitions include: Venice biennale 1999; Biennial Exhibition, The
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2002; Cine y casi cine, Reina Sofia,
Madrid; Tele(vision)--Kunst sieht fern, Kusthalle Wien, Vienna, 2001. Upcoming
exhibitions include Museum fuer Gegenwartskumnst Basel, CH, September 2003,
and Art Sonje Center, Seoul, S. Korea, September 2003.
