What I Still Have To Take Care Of

Christian Jankowski (Göttingen, Germany, 1968)
Collection: Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville et du Canton de Genève (FMAC and FCAC), Neon Parallax project

Christian Jankowski’s work is based on unusual and generally heterogeneous interactions between the art world and people from other cultural or professional fields. He offers collaborations that involve the media, politics, entertainment, religion, or the art market, fields to which he brings a caustic, detached perspective. On the heights of the Plaine de Plainpalais, the question Soll ich noch Geld ausgeben?(Should I spend more money?) is inspired by handwritten notes he addresses to the people surrounding him – assistants, students, gallerists, etc. – as well as to himself. These memory aids include all types of reflections, from the most trivial to the most philosophical. The text he has selected in this case substitutes for advertising signs and incitements to consumption by offering an interrogative message on the need to spend money. The artist draws on private – this emphasized by the use of the personal pronoun – and pragmatic considerations, to give them a universal and reflexive significance addressed to everyone. Thus he diverts the commercial function of neon by turning it into a tool of introspection.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham

Links:  http://www.ville-ge.ch/culture/neons/
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