Christian Jankowski
Welcome Home

Klosterfelde Gallery is looking forward to a new exhibition with Christian Jankowski.
In Welcome Home the artist not only invites the public into his Berlin kitchen, but also onto his rooftop in
his adopted hometown of New York.

On entering the gallery one first approaches the kitchen installation, Kochstudio (2004/08), where moni-
tors have been installed showing Christian Jankowski in conversation with TV chef and talkmaster Alfred
Biolek. Four points of view of a cookery and talkshow event are displayed on these in real time - as long
shot, medium shot, close-up and one displaying timecode. The performance took place in 2004 in the
artist’s kitchen, which had been transported to the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and transformed simul-
taneously into a TV studio.
The displacement and overlap of (semantic) context extends to the fact that Jankowski reverses the roles,
inviting TV chef Biolek into his kitchen. Biolek and Jankowski are cooking bean soup philosophizing
about the interrelation of high art, television and bathos, watching excerpts of three of Jankowski’s video
works at the same time. The end result is a mixture of artistic lecture, cookery show and raw TV format
where the boundaries between television genre and artwork are fluid.

The video Rooftop Routine (2008) was devised during the Performa 2007 in New York, where the artist
invited the public onto the roof of his house in order to attend a hula-hoop performance taking place on
surrounding rooftops in the vicinity.
A Chinese neighbour that he had noticed one morning hula-hooping on the rooftop opposite his house
inspired this idea. He was fascinated by the ruminant quality of this action in the midst of the intricate
street canyons of Chinatown. Thus Jankowski found further hula-hoop dancers, acquired access to roof-
tops in his neighbourhood and won Mrs. Chua over to lead the dance – on a windy Sunday morning in
November he opened his roof to an audience that could behold the many dozen hula-hoopers following
Mrs. Chua’s movements on the nearby rooftops. She appears in the video as the friendly trainer ex-
ercising different moves to the music of her Walkman. The spinning colourful figures on the New York
rooftops are akin to a dance ensemble led by a wonderful choreography of chance and of
seeing and being seen.

For further information, pleae contact the gallery


opening: April 3rd 2008, 6 – 9pm
duration of the exhibition: March 15th – 26th April 2008
opening hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays 11 – 6 pm and by appointment