David Jablonowski at Galerie Fons Welters

Artist: David Jablonowski

Exhibition title: Public Hybrid (Das Kapital Raum)

Venue: Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Date: March 17 – April 28, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam

David Jablonowski’s interest in industrial materials, infrastructure and the way material communicates and impacts the society it stems from, have formed the basis of his practice since its start at De Ateliers in 2008.

In his two earlier solo shows at the gallery, Jablonowski proclaimed his interest in the consumer and producer side of digital technology. Jablonowski’s second solo show in the gallery, Hype Cycle (2014) focused on the interrelations between elements on the Internet, digital marketing and data prediction. The hyperlink, a way to connect two elements online, formed the basis of several of his works, showing the complex ways and systems in which the distribution of information, and therewith global trading and production, had evolved in the last decades. A second concept that underlies Jablonowski’s sculptural installations in this show is ‘big data’. Big data is a way of grouping large quantities of digital information about internet users, which is used to analyze and predict new turns and hypes in term of consumer behavior.

For his third solo show with the gallery, David Jablonowski has created a new sculptural installation composed of among others carbon fibre, glass, aluminum, marble and spices. In his most recent sculptures carbon fibre has begun to play an important role. This high-tech material is sustainable and environmentally friendly, as well as almost impossible to break down. Referencing his home region of the Ruhr area in Germany, Jablonowski also looks deeper into the impact that industrialization and later on the transition towards a more service oriented sector had on the region and the people living there.

Moreover, Jablonowski’s previous research on communication structures is taken a step further in his new show Public Hybrid (Das Kapital Raum). Jablonowski’s new works come from his interest in how the network of (online) communication has become a means to express physical objects. He boldly brings Joseph Beuys’ concept of Soziale Plastik into our times, in which production and consumption of data plays an increasing role. In Soziale Plastik, the infrastructure of society becomes sculpture, created through language, thoughts, actions and objects. Recent technological developments have proclaimed the same in terms of every human becoming both producer and consumer of data, and therewith capital gains and an infrastructure of information: bitcoin-chain technology, the usage of big data and other online developments have created an economy parallel to the existing world economy. To interpret the active role of humankind as consumer and producer of society, Beuys proclaimed ‘Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler’. Jablonowski recognises Beuys’ approach in contemporary online communication structures and poses the question: can our current trading and communicating through the global networks such as the Internet, be seen as a broadening of the concept of what art is (Der Erweiterte Kunstbegriff)?

Amsterdam-based artist David Jablonowski (Bochum, Germany, 1982) received his BA at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, followed by a 2-year residency at De Ateliers, Amsterdam and a residency at ISCP in New York. His works are included in a wide range of institutional and private collections such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Glaskasten Marl, Germany and The Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn. He had large solo-exhibitions at, among others, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (DE); Kunsthalle Lingen (DE), the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts (UK); Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster (DE); Gemeentemuseum The Hague (NL).

David Jablonowski, Public Hybrid (Das Kapital Raum), 2018, exhibition view, Galerie Fons Welters, photography by Gert Jan van Rooij