Christian Jankowski (born 1968 in

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

) is a German contemporary multimedia

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

who largely works with

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

, installation and

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

. He lives and works in Berlin and New York.

Work

Jankowski's work has been associated with

New Gothic Art New Gothic or Neo-Gothic is a contemporary art movement that emphasizes darkness and horror. Manifesto "The Art Manifesto" was written by Gothic subculture artist Charles Moffat in 2001, who also coined the term in an effort to differentiate i ...

and compared with artists like

Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija (, Jerry Saltz (May 7, 2007)Conspicuous Consumption''New York Magazine''.) is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installatio ...

Gillian Wearing Gillian Wearing CBE, RA (born 10 December 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the 1997 Turner Prize. In 2007 Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. H ...

, and

Pierre Huyghe Pierre Huyghe (born 11 September 1962) is a French contemporary artist, who works in a variety of media from films and sculptures to public interventions and living systems. He lives and works in Santiago de Chile. Early life and education Pier ...

. Using various media formats, the collaborative nature of his practice is paramount as each participant unwittingly contributes his or her own texture to the work.Christian Jankowski: Casting Jesus 7 September – 1 October 2011
Lisson Gallery, London ''The Hunt'' (1992), a performance video piece, is one of the artists earliest works. For one week the artist visited supermarkets and rather than select his goods as customary, he‘ hunted down’ his groceries, shooting each item with a children’s bow and arrow, accompanied by a friend with a video camera. For the 23-minute video ''Lycan Theorized'' (2006), Jankowski persuaded the cast and crew working in an actual straight-to-DVD werewolf movie (in which he had a bit part) to re-enact some of its most violent scenes while quoting the writings of various film theorists. The film ''Casting Jesus'' (2011) focuses on an audition to select an actor that best interprets the role of Jesus, judged by a jury of Vatican members. Jankowski has also created a number of television interventions. His video installation ''Telemistica'' was included in the 1999

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

, and shows five Italian television fortune-tellers responding to a phoned-in question about the artist's success or failure at the upcoming Biennale. ''The Holy Artwork'' (2001) is a collaboration with a

televangelist Televangelism (from ''televangelist'', a blend of ''television'' and ''evangelist'') and occasionally termed radio evangelism or teleministry, denotes the utilization of media platforms, notably radio and television, for the marketing of relig ...

pastor from Texas. In ''Discourse News'', Senior Business Anchor Annika Pergament reports on Jankowski's definition of art from her newscaster’s desk at

NY1 NY1 (also officially known as Spectrum News NY1 and spoken as New York One) is an American cable news television channel founded by Time Warner Cable, which itself is owned by Charter Communications through its acquisition in May 2016. The chan ...

.Christian Jankowski: Discourse News, June 21 - July 28, 2012
Petzel Gallery, New York. In 2007, he presented The living sculptures, a project curated by Ferran Barenblit. Barcelona’s popular boulevard

Las Ramblas La Rambla () is considered the most well known street in central Barcelona. A tree-lined pedestrian street, it stretches for connecting the in its center with the Columbus Monument, Barcelona, Christopher Columbus Monument at Port Vell. La Ra ...

is lined with street performers who mimic bronze sculptures by standing motionless, covered in metallic paint from head to toe, for the amusement – and spare change – of thousands of tourists. From the many, Jankowski selected three: personifications of

Che Guevara Ernesto "Che" Guevara (14th May 1928 – 9 October 1967) was an Argentines, Argentine Communist revolution, Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, Guerrilla warfare, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and Military theory, military theorist. A majo ...

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

, and the female figure in

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...

’s Anthropomorphic Chest of Drawers. Then, with the help of a

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

, the artist produced life-size bronze casts of the three figures – along with their soapbox plinths – and placed them at the same spots where he originally encountered them. The sculptures were installed later in London (

Regent's Park Regent's Park (officially The Regent's Park) is one of the Royal Parks of London. It occupies in north-west Inner London, administratively split between the City of Westminster and the London Borough of Camden, Borough of Camden (and historical ...

), New York (

Central Park Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, and the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the List of parks in New York City, sixth-largest park in the ...

) and other locations around the world. Jankowski's installation ''Strip the Auctioneer'' (2009) consists of sculpture, photographs and a video connected to a live auction that was orchestrated by the artist in May 2009. The action takes place at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

auction house in Amsterdam and incorporates the auctioneer, Amo Verkade, as the desired possession. Verkade bids his garment piece by piece down to his hammer. He strips himself of his suit, baring and transforming those parcels of clothing into objects of desire.

Exhibitions

Jankowski's videos, films, and installations have been exhibited internationally in places such as

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is an art museum for contemporary art, located in St. Louis, Missouri. Known informally as the CAM St. Louis, the museum is located at 3750 Washington Boulevard in the Grand Center Arts District. The build ...

(2015); Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, Mexico City, Mexico (2012),

Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, , usually known as MACRO, is a municipal contemporary art museum in Rome, Italy. The museum is housed in two separate places: a former brewery in Via Nizza, in the Salario quartiere of the city; and a form ...

(2012), Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2009);

Kunstmuseum Stuttgart The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is a contemporary art, contemporary and modern art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, built and opened in 2005. Description The cubic museum building with 5000 m2 of display space was designed by Berlin architects Hascher ...

(2008);

Miami Art Museum Miami is a coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a population of 6.14 million, is the second-largest metropolitan ...

, Miami (2007);

List Visual Arts Center Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its admin ...

, Massachusetts (2005);

Artpace Artpace (also known as Artpace San Antonio) is a non-profit contemporary art foundation located in downtown San Antonio, Texas that is free and open to the public. Founded by artist, collector, and philanthropist Linda Pace, Artpace opened its d ...

, San Antonio (2001); and

Wadsworth Atheneum The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...

, Hartford (2000). The artist participated in the 2002

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

, the 48th

, and the XVI Cuenca Biennale, in

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

Notable works

* ''The Hunt'' (1992) * ''My Life as a Dove'' (1996) * ''Let's get physical/digital'' (1997–1998) * ''Telemistica'' (1999) * ''The Holy Artwork'' (2001), held in the collection of the

Tate Gallery, London Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

. * ''Point of Sale'' (2002), held in the collection of the

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple name chang ...

.icaboston.org
* ''What I Still Have to Take Care of'' (2008) permanent neon installation in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

, Switzerland. * ''Tableaux Vivant TV'' (2010), produced for the

Biennale of Sydney The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...

* ''The Finest Art on Water'' (2011), first on show at

Frieze Art Fair Frieze Art Fair is an annual contemporary art, contemporary art festival, art fair first held in 2003 in London's Regent's Park. Developed by the founders of the contemporary art magazine ''Frieze (magazine), Frieze'', the fair has since expan ...

My other Caravaggio’s a yacht
" ''Phaidon.com'', October 2011. * ''Casting Jesus'' (2011) * ''What I still have to take care of?'' permanent work, public art collection of Geneva; The

Neon Parallax Neon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is the second noble gas in the periodic table. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with approximately two-thirds the density of a ...

project (2008)

Quotes

In an interview with

Phaidon Press Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional of ...

ahead of

in October 2011 Jankowski said of his new work, 'The Finest Art on Water' "I’m not saying it’s the best investment ever. History will show! If you can afford it and you’ve already spent 65 million then if you spend 75, there’s a chance that this vessel will have a higher value in the future. My artistic career, the next works that I will do, will inform the price of this thing.”

References

External links

Official website of artist

a description of the artist and his work

Lisson Gallery

BBC interview

''ArtForum'' review

«What I still have to take care of» a neon installation by C. Jankowski, 2007
Text by Agustín Pérez Rubio about the work "Flock" by Jankowski
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jankowski, Christian German video artists German installation artists Living people 1968 births German contemporary artists Academic staff of State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart