| WHO | WHAT | WHEN | WHERE | |||
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Simon JanekDebuted at the Novart.pl festival (Krakow 2002), but he began his creative career some time earlier as VJ Jansi, creating music visualisations. He never took formal art instruction; he studied psychology and sociology at the Jagiellonian University, a fact which has had a clear influence on his art. Simon’s early projects (Carpet Invaders 2002, and Bałwan 2003) grew from his fascination with participation in cyber-culture. From the very beginning, a few leading themes appeared within the circle of his interests, first and foremost the aesthetic and logic of computer games and disaster as a study of threat, defeat, and utopia. He gradually expanded his interests, and began to exploit the Internet as a universally available, free source of information resources and anarchising critique of the system expressed by individual, independent creative activity. Simon also produces conceptual works, among which the best-known is the Polish Year in Madagascar project (2006) – the first exhibition of Polish art in that country – at which the art of no Polish artist was shown, organised entirely by Simon. The creator also makes video films, interactive installations, art objects and actions, and his work is frequently defined as critical and ironic. Janek Simon has taken part in many group shows in Poland and abroad. He has also had individual exhibitions, including: Cracovians Like it Clean at the Warsaw Zachęta Gallery (2005), Gradient at the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery in Krakow (2007), FUGA at the Arsenał Gallery in Białystok (2007), and A Sequence of Events In A Space at the Casino Luxembourg. Forum d'art contemporain in Luxembourg (2008), and in that same year, as a part if the programme, POLSKA! YEAR in Arnolfini in Bristol. He received the main prize of the third edition of the Spojrzenia competition organised by the Deutsche Bank Foundation. He lives and works in Krakow. |
The Tropical CrazeA multi-media spectacle based on the drama by Witkacy.  “For some time now I have been interested in the question of the suppressed or erased memory of Polish colonialism. Before the war, the government planned to establish colonies for Poland, among other places, on Madagascar and in Togo, attempted to establish plantations in Brazil, and signed a secret agreement with the government of Liberia. In Warsaw, one could see representatives of exotic peoples locked in cages, including pygmies and Nubians, and a vaudeville star sang a song with the telling title Dla ciebie stanę się biała [I Will Become White For You]. After 1945 the problem, on the surface, disappeared. Now our identity, limited culturally and historically, stands before the challenge of finding itself in a broader communities – like that of Europe or the West, while the unresolved problem of the colonial question persists. The Metafizyka Dwugłowego Cielęcia [Metaphysics of the Two-headed Calf] reflects upon the broaching of that subject through the prism of the works of Witkacy. Particularly the drama from which the title of the project was excerpted, in an original manner touches on the problems of the relationship between the West and the world outside. This undertaking takes the form of a mechanical-multimedia spectacle, taking place in real time. The mechanised scenes will be created by images and sounds. The image will be reshaped, mixed, and, and subjected to transformations and distortions, smoke will billow and fire will burn. Objects in model scale will be mixed with these elements and with our world, and the living with the dead.” [text: Janek Simon]  Picutres: Weronika Szmuc Project curator: Marta Raczek |
12/06/2010
The Tropical Craze
15/06/2010
The Tropical Craze
17/06/2010
The Tropical Craze
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