Jeffery A. Lowell, M.D.
champions organ donation awareness
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Jeffery A. Lowell, M.D. champions organ donation awareness |
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Video artist Jankowski's display Targets at gallery Aug. 30-Dec. 8
By Liam Otten Christian Jankowski is perhaps the most charmingly democratic artist of his generation, a pedigreed conceptualist who collaborates with children and astrologers, ministers and salesmen, singing customs officials and plain-old pedestrians on videos and installations that blur distinctions between the real and the staged. This fall, the Gallery of Art will present Targets, an exhibition of three of Jankowski's playful yet sometimes disconcerting projects.
While on campus, Jankowski will discuss his work for the School of Art's fall Visiting Artist Lecture Series at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 4 in Steinberg Auditorium. The visit is supported in part by the University's Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Fund. Jankowski, a German native who divides his time between New York and Berlin, combines the subversive spirit of earlier art movements like Fluxus and Happenings, which emphasized the participatory and the experiential, with a dry wit and the production values of cable-access television. "Jankowski's conceptual artworks look familiar precisely because they don't resemble art but instead look like TV shows or feature films," said Sabine M. Eckmann, Ph.D., curator of the Gallery of Art. "The viewer is startled and motivated to sort out mediated reality vs. artistic fiction." For example, The Holy Artwork (2001) -- created in collaboration with Pastor Peter Spencer of the Texas-based televangelical Harvest Fellowship Church -- was filmed and broadcast as part of Spencer's weekly television show. (More recently, it was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2002 Biennial Exhibition.) The piece begins with the 34-year-old artist arising from Spencer's congregation, approaching the pulpit and collapsing at the pastor's feet, video camera in hand. Spencer, speaking directly to the camera, then delivers a sermon about art, preaching against a "one-dimensional view of painting" while praising contemporary art as "a bridge between religion, art and television." Eckmann noted that Jankowski's pose is borrowed from the Spanish Baroque painter Juan Bautista Maino's Saint Dominic in Soriano Ri, in which "the artist is struck down in front of a painting-in-process, only to have the creation completed by an angel." She added, "Although Jankowski certainly worked with Spencer to prepare his sermon, he doesn't seem to have restricted Spencer's contribution. On the contrary, Spencer's sermon appears unscripted." For the three-channel video Point of Sale (2002), Jankowski enlists the words of New York management consultant Clayton Press, who interviews art dealer Michele Maccarone and electronics dealer George Kunstlinger (neighbors in Manhattan's Chinatown) about their respective customers, business plans and financial strategies. The twist is that each dealer delivers the other's answers, thus creating a slightly mischievous picture of contemporary art and 220-volt electronics as equally valid (if essentially marginalized) products of the capitalist economy. Shame Box (1992), one of Jankowski's earliest works, is a video and series of photographs in which random passers-by from the streets of Hamburg, Germany, sit alone in a store window displaying handmade signs describing what she or he is most ashamed of. One woman is ashamed of being a German citizen; one man is ashamed of his body; another man is ashamed of his re-education as a real estate agent. The dissonance between the subjects' formal presentation and the deeply personal revelations is both funny and affecting, and is subtly juxtaposed against the urban surroundings, which can be seen reflected in the panes of glass. "Although Jankowski blurs the boundaries between art and mass culture, the groups or individuals he chooses as his collaborators are only at first alien to an art context," Eckmann said. "In fact, Jankowski uses a religious group to think about the spirituality of art, a management consultant to analyze art's commodity value, and individuals on the street to rethink the genre of portraiture." Born in Gottingen, Germany, in 1968, Jankowski has displayed his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. He first came to international attention at the 1999 Venice Biennale with the video Telemistica, in which local tarot card readers predicted the success of his then-unborn entry. Other notable works include The Matrix Effect (2000), in which young children read the words of internationally known artists; Singing Customs Officers (1999), in which officials belt out their national anthems; and My Life as a Dove (1996), which documents the artist's transformation by a stage magician. The Gallery of Art is located in Steinberg Hall. Hours are 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Fridays; and noon-4:30 p.m. weekends. The gallery is closed Mondays. For more information, call 935-4523. |
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