We're currently closed.We will open again on Thursday 20/2 at 13:00

You have

items in your cart

Janek Simon

Meta Folklore

:

08/04/2022 –
– 15/05
15/05/2022

1646 opened the first solo exhibition in The Netherlands by self-taught artist Janek Simon, showing his newest 3D printed sculptures.

Growing up in Poland during the 1980’s amidst post-war dichotomies, Simon developed an anarchist political position and a resistance to reducing the world into categories. Combined with his urge to intrude on overpowering, opaque technologies, Simon sees the DIY approach as a tool to reappropriate technology and to empower people to dismantle simplistic constructs of reality, categorisation and hierarchies.

For his exhibition at 1646, Simon collected a large database of images from websites like Etsy and Ebay, that problematically categorise folkloric sculptures from around the world. He then used machine-learning programs, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing techniques to produce new sculptures that everyone and at the same time no-one can recognise themselves in. This way, Simon’s work is a gesture that brings focus to openness and common grounds, amidst the devastating geopolitical conflicts of current times.

Info

About Janek Simon: Simon (b. 1977) is a conceptual artist and an occasional curator based in Warsaw. The main motivation behind his work is curiosity. On a more concrete level he is inspired by travel, history of science and political ideas, and the practice and ethics of the DIY culture, always filtering the theories through his personal experience though. In recent years Simon developed a body of work investigating notions of distance and difference between places, working on projects that try to remap semi-peripheral position of Eastern Europe through geographical experiments.   Simon’s works were shown, amongst others, at Manifesta 7, Liverpool Biennale, Prague Biennale, and numerous individual exhibitions in major public art institutions in Poland and elsewhere (Arnolfini Bristol, Casino Luxembourg, Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, CSW Zamek Ujazdowski and others).

Share

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on whatsapp
Share on email

Related