the european biennial of contemporary art
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artists

Janek Simon

1977, Krakow, PL Lives in Krakow, PL

Volkswagen Transporter T2, 2008 Car, paint, sound

ROVERETO

Janek Simon’s interactive installations, videos and objects are inspired by computer games, the Internet and the archive in its multiple meanings. They are concerned with access to knowledge, distribution of information and analyzing ambiguous relationships between culture and economy within neo-liberal capitalism. Failure and catastrophe, as well as chance and probability are amongst the topics of Simon’s interests. He often applies subversive strategies of an anarchistic nature. Loosely inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 story La Lotería en Babilonia (The Lottery in Babylon), in which a lottery conducts and determines various aspects of the characters’ lives, Janek Simon takes the principle of randomness as the point of departure for his new installation, Volkswagen Transporter T2 . The methodology of randomness is seen as a formative significance for a development of societies and civilization at large. The artist is concerned with a democratic structure of choice and selection, its availability and the potential for generating new, endless sets and mosaic-like constellations. Simon turns an early model Volkswagen Transporter, a model loaded with many connotations of sub-cultural and radical activism, into an ironic monument to diversity and multiplicity. The artist has carefully dismantled the entire vehicle and painted each singular part with a randomly chosen color. This creates an absurd and anarchic kaleidoscope, an abstract entity as an expression of coherence found in extreme diversity, based upon unlimited choice and radical randomness.


Location

ROVERETO

ADAM BUDAK: "PRINCIPLE HOPE"

EX PETERLINI, VIA SAVIOLI 20 – MANIFATTURA TABACCHI, P.ZZA MANIFATTURA 1 -STAZIONE FERROVIARIA, PIAZZALE ORSI, I-38068 ROVERETO, ITALY

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