David Jablonowski

BLUE GREENS

21 September - 18 November 2012

With the upcoming exhibition the Westfälische Kunstverein will be a guest at the botanical gardens in Münster. The artist David Jablonowski will install new sculptures and installations in close proximity to the greenhouses, flower beds and gardens.In his works, Jablonowski questions the potential of communication in contemporary visual culture. In the form of sculptures, videos and installations, he focuses on the theme of the development of language as a technically reproducible code and its aesthetic development with regard to the communication of knowledge and information. The artistic visual language of sculpture seems to be contrary to this topic. In his mainly sculptural installations, Jablonowski takes a surprising approach to volumes and shapes and their relationship to one another, shapes which form a contrast for example to two-the dimensional or virtual nature of the communication technologies such as print or Internet. In doing so, he confronts the transience of the smart technology of surfaces with materiality and sensual experiences such as feel, smell, temperature and light.In his sculptures and installations there is a mixture of historical and contemporary media hardware, which enters into dialogue with the codes of the “software” of these “machines”. The focus is above all on the surfaces of the reproducible visual and information techniques as an interface between analogue ideas and interaction and digital processing. The artistic interest is on the sculptural quality of communication techniques as well as the specific aesthetics of different historical information codes and formats, which make a long-term impact on perception and cultural self-conception.Against the backdrop of the botanical gardens, Jablonowski will create a new site-specific group of works which deals with the specific materiality and the communication strategies of the fields of industry that specifically draw on an ecological rhetoric. In a similar way to his focus on the colour codes of social networks in previous works, he will take up the colour codes and connotations of a communication aesthetic that refers to suastainability and nature in contemporary advertising, politics and technological development. Taking sculpture as a starting point he is interested in exploring communicative strategies and the design of codes within recent technological trends.

David Jablonowksi (*1982, Bochum) lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied from 2003 to 2007 at the Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Amsterdam and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Following that he studied at de Ateliers Programm from 2007 to 2009 and was awarded with a scholarship for New York by iscp in 2011. He has had solo exhibitions in, among other places, user, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (2012); Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2011); Comma 30, Bloomberg Space, London (2011); Perfection, Simple Way, Galerie Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin (2010); Material Kontingenz, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amsterdam (2012); Imposition, Schaufenster – Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2009).

On the occasion of the exhibition, a publication will be issued by Mousse Publishing in November and will also be available as an e-book version.

Curated by Katja Schroeder

We are very grateful to the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation for supporting David Jablonowski with their programme “catalogues for young artists” and enabling him to realise his planned catalogue and exhibition project. We would also like to thank the WestLB Stiftung Zukunft NRW (WestLB Foundation Future NRW) and the Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam for their kind support.

Public programme

Artist talk Sunday, 18 November at 2 pm

> Slideshow