Artist: Jakub Jansa
Exhibition title: CLUB OF OPPORTUNITIES Ep.5: Keeping in Line
Curated by: Pavel Kubesa
Venue: NoD Gallery, Prague, The Czech Republic
Date: October 23 – November 26, 2018
Photography: Pavel Kubesa / images copyright and courtesy of the artist and NoD Gallery
Taking inspiration from the methodology of storytelling, Jakub Jansa uses narration as an instrument created by the mind to contextualize reality and explains it according to a logic of senses, in order to examine identity processes and media experiences in depth and focus on the dynamics of social influencing. By doing so, he develops a sort of “interactive process” within which the narrative discourse allows for several interpretations to whoever makes contact with the story that Jansa himself wants to tell, in particular: “Club of Opportunities”, in its fifth episode, presents its undisputed main character, “actor” Red Herring, in a new significant evolution process.
His poetry, seemingly twisted and dreamlike, is based on expanded and elaborate metaphors and his language, carefully structured and polished, turns out to be intentionally rhetorical, a sort of subversive declamation designed to deconstruct the more traditional spoken narration.
Acting almost as an omniscient narrator, Jansa uses cryptic and intimate dramaturgy to create settings in an almost Shakesperean style. Based on his empirical experience, he describes characters and archetypal situations deliberately transforming their nature through a motion that goes from the top down and viceversa, so as to achieve a distinctive poetry and structuring the plot from time to time to create multiple interesting themes and to show various possible points of view.
Jansa gives voice to a distinctive aspect of today’s society, characterized by an intense “media socialization”, by examining the most direct interpersonal encounter and highlighting the lack of adaptability towards society that the individual often shows. In his epic poem “Club of Opportunities”, Jansa describes its characters in real time through enchanting tales and makes the obscure and mysterious entities more visible and comprehensible. Red Harring is here ready to fight against himself in a cerebral and almost videogame-y “mise en scène” centred around his own two battling personalities, each constantly trying to take control of his attitude towards the outside world.
-Domenico de Chirico, 2018
