Janek Simon
Winner of the 3rd Edition of the Competition:
Views 2007 – Deutsche Bank Foundation Award
pl. Malachowskiego 3, 00-916 Warsaw
phone (48 22) 827 58 54
Press: rzecznik [at] zacheta.art.pl
Janek Simon was born in 1977 in Cracow. From 1999-2001 he studied in the Sociology Department of the Jagiellonian University, and from 1997-2001 he also studied in the Psychology Department of the
same university.
The artist creates surrealist mechanisms which relate to the wealth of absurdity that surrounds us. His calculators cheat us, and his printers are loaded with document destroyers and produce rubbish. He generates nonsense, organising for example the Polish Year in Madagascar, while the works he makes are synonyms
of independence.
Janek Simon makes use of his constructor’s abilities in ever more unusual projects. Thus emerged the walking Cracow Bread, where single loaves, reminiscent of insects, helplessly walk around the other work he presented in Zacheta, Robot VJ Mixing Television Channels 1 and 2, an installation whose principal elements are an old television set and a video mixer: an object belonging to club culture which in the 1980s was an unattainable object of desire for school-kids. The mixer produces a mix of two television channels (in those days there were only two and it was they that formed the shape of the world). The mixing creates the impression of a shifting of reality, of a psychedelic disturbance of the obvious and everyday. Perhaps this work makes obvious reference to political realia and the metaphor of manipulation, but more important seems the theme of an experimentation with the everyday, of an activity beyond schemata. An activity which enchants the space of art, making of the artist someone who moves in between, consciously avoiding easy definitions, who lives beyond the system…
5 individual artists and 2 artistic groups were nominated for this year’s edition of the competition:
- Galeria Rusz (Joanna Górska, Rafal Góralski)
- Rafal Jakubowicz
- Olga Lewicka
- Karol Radziszewski
- Sedzia Glówny (Aleksandra Kubiak, Karolina Wiktor)
- Janek Simon
- Michal Stachyra
Works by all the artists, prepared specially for this occasion, can be seen at the exhibition presented in Zacheta from 15th September to 11th November 2007. The exhibition curator is Monika Szewczyk — director of the “Arsenal” Gallery in Bialystok.
The exhibition is organised by the Deutsche Bank Foundation, Deutsche Bank Polska S.A. and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, under the honorary patronage of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
The Zacheta Gallery public also selected its favourite of the current edition of the competition. Their vote for the Public Award went to
Michal Stachyra
Michal Stachyra was born in 1981 in Lublin, where he still lives and works. He graduated from the Painting Studio in the Art Department of the Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin in 2006.
