Christian Jankowski

Telemistica, 1999 (22 min. and television broadcast) In Venice for the 48th Biennale, Jankowski learns Italian. Speaking live on the telephone to five TV fortune tellers, the artist asks them each essential questions pertaining to the artwork he is in the process of creating.

16mm Mystery, 2004 (5 min.) Jankowski approaches two special effects experts, the Hollywood-based Brothers Strause, to help him bring to life a 35mm film project. Jankowski insists upon the skeleton of the action: The artist carries film projection equipment to a place, where he sets it up and screens a film. The film screening then triggers a special effect. Jankowski commissions the Bothers Strause to flesh out the details and choose what type of digitally-created effect the screening will generate. Greg and Colin Strause set the action on the roof of a parking lot against the background of the Los Angeles city skyline. Jankowski sets up a 16mm projector atop the parking lot and starts his film rolling. He then walks out of the picture as the projector continues to run. Ten seconds later, the silence is jarred by a loud rumble, and the skyscraper in the background explodes in magnificent Hollywood blockbuster fire. When the dust settles, Jankowski returns, packs up his equipment, and leaves the scene without ever revealing the content of the 16mm film.

Hollywood Snow, 2004 (12 min.) Members of the German film business who normally work on a film's practical realization, as opposed to the creative process… a private investor, a state funder, a producer, a distributor, a festival director, and a film critic… describe their visions of the ultimate cinematic moment. As they recite their monologues, a special effect occurs, the exact nature of which they have until now been unaware.

Christian Jankowski was born in 1968 in Gottingen, Germany. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe and the U.S. He has recently had solo exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO) in Rome, and a survey at the Museum fur Gegenwartskunst in Basel. A traveling solo exhibition has been organized by the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Boston. In 2006, the exhibition will travel to The Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool.

Christian Jankowski