Zuzanna Janin – TRANSFORMED. METAMORPHOSED.
2018. May. 13. - 2018. Jul. 08.
Zuzanna Janin’s (born in 1961) installations, videos, objects, and sculptures primarily deal with the basic questions of time and existence, oftentimes in unconventional ways.Janin, starting her career as a sculptor in the 1990’s, through her installations, videos, objects, drawings, collages and performances, has primarily been focusing on fundamental existential issues, often in an innovative style, and always along a clear artistic strategy and a firm concept. She created her own iconography that is free from any superficial aesthetics, and at the same time is sensitive, raw, personal – but still general, direct and dialogue-provoking – and never ready to compromise.
The starting points of her works are the situations and emotions she has actually lived becoming general through her lens. She addresses the position of the individual in the society facing phenomena that are often ignored: the lack of understanding, search of a common language, fight, falling apart and re-building, betrayal, loneliness, insecurity, threats, violence, disgrace, extrusion, standing by the weak, equal rights, personal freedom, memory, respect, loss, exile and home.
”(…) my works are not biographical although were inspired by my own observations. I seek experiences that have the capacity to display common stories. I do not speak about myself through my works so that I can shed some limelight upon myself. I would like to demonstrate the point of intersection of individual and collective memories.” (ZJ)
Transformation is expressly a characteristic of Janin’s artistic method – also stressed in the title of the exhibition – that means transposing materials into a different quality. That is not only a physical metamorphosis but often bringing the deepest, intimate emotions to the surface, to be directly and honestly confronted with visuality and matter, and to be embodied through the special sense for space.
Artist:
Zuzanna Janin
Curator:
Kónya Ábel