How to explain performance to living flies

July 3, 2009

Opening: 3.07.2009, peformance: 12.00-8.00 pm
6.07.2009 – 31.07.2009
Cooperation: Sarmen Beglarian

Dominik Jałowiński (b. 1981, Lublin) is a painter and performance artist. He defended his diploma thesis in Krzysztof Wachowiak’s studio at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts’ Faculty of Painting. He lives and works in Warsaw

Dotychczas zrealizował kilka performance, m.in. w galerii Aspekt mieszczącej się na poddaszu warszawskiej ASP: Tak, czy tak, Flesh Fresh (2007). Brał udział m.in. w Europejskim Festiwalu Sztuki Performance EPAF’07 w CSW – Zamek Ujazdowski  w Warszawie (2008), oraz w Międzynarodowym Festiwalu Sztuki Performance w Galerii Arsenał w Białymstoku (2009). Swoje obrazy pokazywał w ramach kilku wystaw zbiorowych, m.in. Pamięć tej chwili z odległości lat, które miną w dawnej Fabryce Schindlera w ramach 17. Festiwalu Kultury Żydowskiej w Krakowie (2007), Powstanie sztuki, MCSW Elektrownia w Radomiu (2008). Jest autorem jednego z murali przy Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (2007).

The title of Dominik Jałowski’s performance, How to explain performance to living flies, is a travesty of Joseph Beuys’ famous 1965 piece, played at the Galerie Schmela in Düssledorf, How to explain pictures to a dead hare. As the artist wrote of his performance, The concept of explaining something to an animal is provoked by a sense of the mystery of the world and of existence within it and this mystery appeals to the imagination. At the same time, as I’ve already said, even a dead animal acts with more intuitional skills than some people do, with their persistent rationalism. (…) The problem lies in the word ‘understanding’ and its myriad meanings, meanings which cannot be restricted to rational analysis. Imagination, inspiration, intuition and desire lead people toward a sense that there are other levels which have their role to play in understanding. [Joseph Beuys, Texts, commentaries and interviews, compiled by Jaromir Jedliński, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw 1990, pg. 49.]

What Dominik Jałowiński undertakes in his work is a perverse play on the conventions of performance art. He attempts to strip away the weight of grandiloquence from a genre usually acknowledged as coming from the far extremes of individualisation, hermeticism and ambiguity. At the Foskal, he is shut inside a white cube. The figure of the artist, explaining the meaning of the action to some flies as they circle around and around him, can only be viewed by the public via a small window. And it is thus the flies which are, in fact, at the audience of his performance. In this work, modelled on Beuys, Dominik Jałowiński accents the role of imagination and intuition in both the creative process and the reception of contemporary art. The results of Jałowiński’s work will be presented at the Foksal Gallery in the form of a month-long installation.